Ghost Boy ((REVAMP))
by turbomun
Summary: One night, Turbo went to bed in frustration, wondering what he could possibly do about that Road Blasters game. When he woke up, thirty years had passed, and he was in a new game called Sugar Rush. But now people are treating him strangely, and he feels like there's something he can't remember... New & improved version of the original Ghost Boy fic.
1. Prologue

**Author's Note**

Ghost Boy was originally written between November 2012 and January 2013, and was posted both here and Tumblr, where it proved to be decently popular. With Wreck-It Ralph 2 coming out in just over a year, I figured that it was high time to go back and fix a few of the things in this story that were bugging me. If it's all set to become an AU soon, I might as well make it a good AU, right?

Originally I was only posting this revamp on AO3, but due to popular demand, I'm now adding it here. This is not a complete rewrite of Ghost Boy, but there are many considerable alterations, which vary chapter by chapter (sometimes only a few things have been edited, other times most of the chapter has been replaced with new material). If you've read this story before, I hope that you enjoy the changes, and feel free to tell me what you think. If you've never read this story before...well, it's about Turbo, and that's all I'll say for now...

* * *

" _Memory is the great deceiver. Perhaps there are some individuals whose memories act like tape recordings, daily records of their lives complete in every detail, but I am not one of them. My memory is a patchwork of occurrences, of discontinuous events roughly sewn together: The parts I remember, I remember precisely, whilst other sections seem to have vanished completely._ "

Neil Gaiman, _Murder Mysteries_

* * *

 _Prologue_

* * *

"I think that should be everything."

"It took a pretty long time."

"Well, he had more junk in his code than cavities in a candy store, of course it took a long time! No wonder he went nuts. Do yourself a favor, squirt, and don't ever try the DIY approach to character mods."

"Wasn't plannin' on it."

"Maybe he wasn't, either…"

"We don't know one way or the other, and now, neither does he. That's the whole point. You _did_ delete that stuff, right?"

"Uh…no."

" _No?!_ "

"I couldn't! It was all tangled up with the rest of him, he would have fallen apart if I had! So I just…separated it. Moved it to where it can't bother anybody."

"I don't believe this. It would be _better_ if he just fell apart!"

"Ralph!"

"Don't you 'Ralph' me! You know that this is a bad idea!"

"At least we can pull the plug easily enough if the need arises, but I have to agree. I haven't seen anyone putting themselves in danger more deliberately since Dunderson wandered into the Cy-bug nest on the thirty-seventh floor."

"But doesn't everyone deserve a second chance…?"

"…no."

"I'm gonna have to say no on that."

"You guys! Quit it, okay?! This is my game, and I say we're doing this! And it _will_ work!"

"Whether it'll work or not, it's already done."

"Doesn't that mean that he's going to be waking up soon?"

"Yes."

"Then we better make sure that he's not by himself when it happens."

"We're going to regret this."

"No way, Stinkbrain. You'll see. Now, come on, and if you're scared, just hide behind me…"


	2. Nothing lasts forever

_Nothing lasts forever_

* * *

"Hey, look, it's the ghost boy."

Turbo might have looked somewhat dead, being near-frozen the way he was – with round glassy eyes staring at nothing and ungloved hands wrapped around a cold milkshake glass – but he was neither deaf nor dumb, and he narrowed his eyes. "I can hear you," he stated hollowly.

The closest voice, the one that seemed to be directly behind him, feigned a gasp. "Well, would you look at that! He's still alive!"

A few other people laughed, not all of them cruelly. Being an arcade game character in those early days, a sense of humor about technological limitations was required. Everyone complained about the bizarre bodies that they had been shoved into by their programmers, and everyone teased everyone else about the very same thing. Back when his game had first been added to the arcade, over seven years ago now, Turbo had been one of the most human-looking characters around in a sea of Pac-Mans and Q*berts and Space Invaders. But the funny thing about those characters was, they possessed a sort of appeal despite their simplicity. They weren't the most realistic designs in the world, obviously, but there was nothing unsettling about them, either.

That wasn't so for Turbo.

From the very start, mirrors had been his enemies. White, white skin; an overly toothy yellow grin; a snub nose, slightly darker than the rest of his face; nearly black hollows around yellow eyes. Why did he have dark circles that made his eyes look so sunken, giving his entire face a skeletal appearance? His only guess that it had been his developers' attempt to differentiate his facial features from his skin tone, but then again, Jet and Set didn't have that particular feature, and they didn't look half as creepy as he did. Sure, their designs came across as being very simplified, but they seemed to make themselves understood just fine.

Anyway, Turbo had been living with the nickname "ghost boy" ever since more complex characters like the Fix-It Felix Jr. crowd had been plugged in, when suddenly everybody got yet another reason to make fun of him – like they hadn't had enough ammunition already. But he knew that today, the references to his "death" weren't being made because of how he looked. It was because of the new game that had been plugged in last week.

"Have you said your goodbyes yet, ghost boy?" sneered the first, ill-meaning heckler. Turbo didn't bother turning around to see who it was. It could have been anyone, really; they were all thinking the same thing. "Now that RoadBlasters is here, you're as good as unplugged. This arcade is updating fast, and now that the gamers can race without having to look at your ugly mug, they don't need Turbo Time anymore."

Turbo squeezed his hands around his milkshake glass. Condensation was pooling beneath his flesh, drenching his palms with frigid water. "Leave me alone," he said tonelessly.

The voice snickered. "Fine, fine. If it's alone time you want, ghost boy, I wouldn't worry too much about that. You'll be getting plenty of it from now on!"

A bitter lump solidified in his throat, and he hurriedly took a sip of his milkshake to gulp down the potential for tears before it started. The action left a strange taste in his mouth as whipped cream and chocolate syrup mingled with loneliness and remorse.

"Heads up, Turbo." The racer lifted his elbows as Tapper came around to swipe the bar with a damp cloth. Turbo couldn't see anything marring the gleaming surface, not even the most miniscule speck of dust, but Tapper seemed to be lost when he wasn't cleaning compulsively. The bartender smiled sympathetically. "Don't mind those guys, kid. You know that they're just messing with you."

"I'm not a _kid_ ," snapped Turbo. "And I don't care about them. What I care about is that stupid Road Blasters game and what it's going to do to me!"

A long time ago, when Turbo Time had first been plugged in, Turbo had gone forth to try and make friends with every confidence that he could do so. The other residents of Litwak's seemed nice enough at first, always eager to make new characters feel welcome…but as the months passed, he began to notice something in their smiles that he didn't quite trust. Months had passed before he realized that at some point, their genuine friendliness had curdled into mocking, and everything about him had become a running joke: his tone of voice, his endless excited talk about his latest racing victories, his tendency to never catch on to the fact that he wasn't wanted…and of course, his appearance. But up until now, he had been able to offset the snide comments with reminders that he belonged to _the most popular game in the arcade_ , thank you very much. So what if he had been conceived at a time when game designers had only very basic color palettes, and so what if he usually felt like everyone else was communicating in a secret code and he hadn't been given the right translation key? It was _his_ game that the arcade patrons lined up to play. Not Pac-Man, not Q*bert, not Space Invaders: Turbo Time. It was the one thing that he had going for him, so he made sure to rub it into everyone's faces whenever the opportunity arose

It had taken less than a week for RoadBlasters to snatch what little he did have away from him. There were no characters in that game, nothing with a personality, but did the gamers care about that? No, they only had eyes for the fancy-pants glitter graphics. And there wasn't a thing that Turbo could do about it. He could flash his lopsided grin as much as he pleased, shout his customary catchphrase, "Turbo-Tastic!" at the top of his lungs, but at the end of the day his coding would still make him look like a freaky white racer…like a ghost boy. It was a part of the program, and it couldn't be changed.

Tapper sighed. "It's tough all over. All of these game companies keep trying to best each other, and you never know if you're gonna be plugged in tomorrow or if some hotshot new guy is gonna swoop in and take your place." He withdrew his cloth and leaned back to admire his handiwork. "But at the end of the day, all games get unplugged eventually. Nothing lasts forever."

"Easy for you to say!" Turbo scowled and shoved away his half-full milkshake glass, wiping his damp hands on his jumpsuit. "You've only been plugged in a year, and there's nobody around to steal your thunder! "

Tapper only rolled his eyes, never leaving his role of the sagely advice-giving bartender. "Nothing lasts forever, kid," he repeated, before moving away to serve up root beer to a few other customers.

" _I'm not a kid_ ," Turbo hissed under his breath, dropping from the bar stool where he had been perched. He left a fistful of coins on the bar, but only enough to pay for the milkshake; there was no way that he'd be giving that know-it-all Tapper a tip tonight. Tapper didn't understand. Nobody understood what Turbo was going through; no one appreciated his achievements or bothered to wonder how he might feel when they called him "ghost boy."

They said that he liked to boast, that he took pleasure in hogging all of the gamers' attention. Well, they weren't considering the fact that maybe – just maybe – that was the extent of the positive attention that Turbo ever got.

* * *

Turbo Time was a cramped little world consisting of a racetrack and little else. The grass extended slightly farther than the players could see, and hidden behind the stands were three small buildings; these were the miniscule garages where the three programmed karts were stored, and also where the game's racers bunked down every night. No one lived here except for the lead character and two NPCs. The false grandstands were only filled with rows upon rows of mottled neutral-colored pixels, since the programmers hadn't even bothered to put in enough coding to make them real spectators. It was deserted, and lonely, and it often felt just plain creepy when you were waking up in the middle of the night and you were all alone in the dark and despite all your bravado, you really did feel like a kid…not that Turbo would know.

This was the place that he called home.

Over by the "neighborhood," Jet and Set were leaning over their cars, playfully jostling one another, and laughing. Turbo's mood darkened further when he saw them. Jet and Set claimed that they were just as lonely as he was, but he figured that couldn't be true, because they were identical twins who had each other no matter what. Not just identical twins, but _exact duplicates_. From the time that their game had been first plugged in, Turbo had never seen one of them without the other.

Jet was the first to notice him, and he halted in his roughhousing long enough for his brother to nearly snatch away his helmet. "You're back!" he exclaimed, waving.

Set paused, gave up the game, and adopted a too-cool-for-school pose leaning against his car. "How was Tapper's?"

"Same as always," grumbled Turbo, squaring his shoulders and fully intending to pass by them without a second glance. Jet and Set instinctively were supposed to instinctively regard him as their leader; that was another part of the programming. But lately there'd been a rift gradually opening up between them – or more specifically, between Turbo and Set, the first- and third-place racers. Jet, stuck in the middle, was left to desperately try and keep the peace between them, like a teacher trying to separate two troublesome kids…

 _Except I'm not a kid_.

Technically, all three Turbo Time racers were approximately the same age – somewhere around fourteen or fifteen years old. Turbo was clueless as to why they had been condemned to live out their lives as teenagers; if their game had once had a plot that depended upon them being so young, it had been scrapped long before release. And it just made the other denizens of the arcade look down on them that much more. Being an adult was normal, and even ageless creatures were nothing to make a fuss about, but teenagers? Oh, look at those silly boys, trotting around the arcade and thinking they're people! How cute! But remember, don't use too many big words around them, because they're just kids…

Turbo hated being called "kid" almost as much as he hated being called a ghost boy.

"Did something happen?" asked Jet, approaching the lead character with nervously clasped hands. The genuine concern in his voice caused Turbo's temples to throb with anger.

"You _know_ what's the matter!" he spat. "Both of you already know! We haven't been played more than half a dozen times since RoadBlasters got plugged in, and yet you two are just standing here and messing around like everything's peachy-keen!"

Jet and Set exchanged a glance, then shrugged in unison. Set rolled his eyes when he thought Turbo wasn't looking.

"What's the big deal?" he demanded. "This happens every time a new game gets plugged in. The gamers go ga-ga for a few days, but then eventually they trickle back…"

"You don't get it, do you?!" shouted Turbo. "We've been _replaced_! Now that there's a glitter-graphics racing game to play, nobody needs us anymore! We're as good as unplugged!"

Jet cringed. "Th-that's not true…is it?"

"Of course it's not," Set assured his brother, sending a glare in Turbo's direction. "Turbo's just throwing a hissy fit because now he doesn't get to stand up on a podium and shove his trophy in our faces a hundred times a day. Seriously, Turbo, we lose all the time and the gamers never pay much attention to us, and you don't see us throwing temper tantrums!"

"That's because you two are just NPCs!" Turbo felt a sudden urge to throw something on the ground…his helmet, maybe, if it wasn't for the fact that he was so anal about removing his helmet. He had enough problems being the local ghost boy without people remarking on his perfectly spherical bald head, as well. "Of course it doesn't matter if you're just the third-place racer, but it's _different_ for me!"

Set's jaw clenched, but before he could start an argument, his twin butted in to hopefully steer the conversation in a more productive direction.

"Turbo, we understand that you're upset!" interrupted Jet pleadingly. "This is our game, too. No matter what happens, we've all gotta stick together. We're trying to be your friends here…"

"…but you make it hard for us, since you're so arrogant and selfish all the time!" finished Set. "Would it kill you to actually be nice to another person, for just once in your life!"

Turbo's fists retracted into tight wads at his sides. "You don't get ahead in life by being nice!" he growled. "You don't _win_ by being nice! And being nice doesn't get you much in this arcade. We're probably about to be unplugged anyway, so why should I start kissing up to everyone now?!" And with that, he shoved the twins out of his way and stormed off to his solitary little garage.

It wasn't fair. It just wasn't fair!

His life was being ruined by the limitations of his programming. If only his designers hadn't made him look so bizarre…if only they'd given him a personality that could transcend even the most alluring of glitter-graphics! He had the ability to achieve something great, he could feel it…maybe with just a few tweaks in his code, things would be different…

When Turbo went to bed that night, curling up in order to cram himself into the oversized tire where he slept, hot tears of frustration were pressing at his eyes. He felt weak and powerless and alone – he felt like a kid, and he couldn't allow himself that kind of indulgence. You could afford to be a kid when you had parents or guardians, or someone who would ensure that your immaturity wouldn't mean dire consequences. He didn't have anyone, and that was just how he liked it. He was strong enough to take care of himself. No one would ever slow him down or get in his way…

"I'm Turbo," he murmured to himself. "The greatest racer ever. I am not a kid. And I'm not going to let myself get stopped by something like a bunch of zeroes and ones, no way, no how."

There was a saying about never going to bed while you were angry, because the time could be better spent staying awake and plotting your revenge. Turbo was certainly simmering as he tucked himself in for the night, but he allowed his eyes to close regardless. He would do something about this. Something so great that it would earn him the adulation of not only the gamers, but the other characters in Litwak's Arcade as well. And then no one would ever dare to call him a ghost boy or a _kid_ again.

As he drifted off, the only thing he had yet to decide was what exactly his extraordinary task would be…


	3. Thirty years is a while

_Thirty years is a while_

* * *

Turbo had always been a notoriously light sleeper, prone to jerking into half-alertness at the slightest provocation during the night, and Jet and Set had often accused him of sleep-muttering, as well. If there was any benefit to being stuck in a state of perpetual restlessness, it was that he could wake up without too much trouble when it was time to start work in the morning. It didn't take much; a stretch, a yawn, a quick change of clothes, and he'd be ready to begin the day. Which was why it was so perplexing that as he came around this morning, the bleary fuzzy-headedness of sleep refused to retreat.

He groaned, shifting in bed slightly, eyelids twitching against his cheeks. He felt dreadful, like that one time where a player had run him off the track and into a wall and he'd gotten a concussion that the program had taken far too long to clear up. _What was in that milkshake last night?_ he wondered groggily.

"Turbo…hey, Turbo…."

He attempted to press his ears into the pillow. Whose was that voice, anyway? It didn't sound like Jet or Set, but at the same time, it was familiar. He could almost place it, but not quite…

"Time to wake up now, Turbo…"

Turbo's nose twitched. Why was he smelling something sweet all of a sudden? Was that his pillow? The aroma put him in mind of…marshmallows.

And from there, it took him about five seconds to realize that this was not his bed, and he was not in his room, and definitely not in his game.

Turbo snapped to attention and sat up as straight as he could – or at least, he tried to, but dark swirling spots obstructed his vision almost immediately. He collapsed back down to his pillow in an instant, dizzy. His stomach lurched.

"Woah, hey, easy now!" exclaimed the voice again. Turbo squinted up suspiciously. A man – that is, a human man who actually looked like a human – was leaning over the proper, non-giant-tire bed, flickering concern in his baby blue eyes. The letters "FF" were stitched on the cap pulled over his neatly parted brown hair, but more telling than that, a golden hammer was dangling from the tool belt at his side.

"F…Fix-It Felix?" he said weakly, his brow furrowing. He'd known Felix for years; they seemed to run into each other a lot, and Felix was one of the few people Turbo knew who'd never made fun of him, probably because Felix was way too nice to make fun of anybody. But his presence here only made things even more perplexing.

"That's me." Fix-It Felix smiled nervously, rocking back and forth on his feet.

"What are you doing here?" Turbo glanced around at his surroundings, willing his blurry vision to tighten. "Where _is_ here?"

From what he could gather, "here" appeared to be an elegant guest room of some sort. There was a vanity table with a mirror, a wardrobe, and the bed that he was lying in, but no personal items to speak of. Upon closer examination, he realized that all of the furnishings and even the walls themselves were constructed of edible materials, mostly various kinds of sweets. Even his bed, as comfortable as it was, felt suspiciously as if it might be utilizing a sponge cake mattress.

He rubbed his eyes. There was so much _detail_ – he had never seen graphics like this before, not even in that stupid RoadBlasters. "Is this supposed to be Candy Land or something?" he asked.

Fix-It Felix shook his head, his smile slipping a notch. "You're in a game called Sugar Rush," he explained. "You wouldn't know it."

"Huh? I'm in a new game?" Turbo propped himself up on his elbows, this time having more success in keeping his balance. "How did I get here?"

"Welllll…this game isn't exactly new," answered Felix, ignoring Turbo's second question intentionally or otherwise. "I mean, it's been around for a few years."

"A _few_ _years_? That's not even possible. I've lived in this arcade for six years and I've never even heard of a game called Sugar Rush before," declared Turbo. His eyes swayed around the room warily. "What's going on around here?"

Felix released a slow breath. "Look, friend, I don't want to shock you too much here…it's, um, it's been a while."

Turbo looked dubious. "How long is 'a while?'"

"Uhhh…welllll…" The handyman rubbed the back of his neck uncomfortably. "Some people would say thirty years is a while…"

Turbo felt his heart jolt involuntarily. " _Thirty years_...what the…!"

He tried to jump out of bed. In his mind, he saw the move executed perfectly; he could practically feel his feet hitting the floor effortlessly, nearly heard his own voice demanding answers from Fix-It. In reality, it didn't work out nearly as well. As soon as he was in an upright position, his dizziness smacked into him at top speed, and his trembly legs were suddenly insufficient to support him. He collapsed against the side of the bed.

"Woah – easy, Turbo, easy!" Felix knelt down at the fallen racer's side and gripped his arm gently. "Are you all right? Jiminy jaminy…"

"Owww, my head…" Turbo groaned and raised a shaky hand to his forehead. This headache could certainly give that concussion a run for its money. "I-it feels like someone gave me a full-frontal lobotomy!"

Felix smiled sympathetically – or was it anxiously? – but he didn't say anything as he helped Turbo back into bed.

"You shouldn't try getting up yet," Felix warned. "We've, um, had to do some recoding work on you…your body needs time to recover."

"Why did you have to do recoding work on me?!" demanded Turbo, his mind far from appeased despite his body's weak state. "Why was I asleep for thirty years?! What's going on?!"

At that moment, the door was kicked down by a blonde woman clad in imposing black armor. She was probably taller than both Felix and Turbo combined, and she also had an extremely large gun, which she proceeded to aim at Turbo's face. "I heard something fall!" she barked. "What's happening in here, Felix?! Are you hurt?!"

Turbo yelped fearfully and recoiled into the pillow. His head protested against the sudden movement, but there was no way that he was going to just sit still with this maniac lady pointing a blaster at him.

Luckily, Felix came to the rescue, scrambling in front of the woman with his hands outstretched. "Tamora, stop! Everything's fine, he just fell out of bed! Calm down!"

The woman glared at the terrified Turbo, seemed to conclude from his shuddering limbs and lack of weaponry that he wasn't a threat, and reluctantly holstered her gun.

Felix turned back to Turbo with steepled fingers and a guilty smile on his face, unsuccessfully trying to convince the racer that there was no cause for alarm. "It's all right, Turbo. This is my wife, Sergeant Tamora Jean Calhoun. She can be a little aggressive, but she won't hurt you…unless you do anything bad, that is, but you wouldn't do anything like that, would you?"

Turbo's round yellow eyes didn't move from the soldier woman. With the way she was staring at him, it was abundantly clear that she was expecting him to do something worthy of punishment. It was bizarre, quite frankly. He might have looked a little creepy in the face, but he was tiny and slender, and he didn't even have a car to bolster him. But judging by the look on her face, he could have been a potential mass murderer.

All Turbo said was, "You're _married_? To this lady? What the what?"

Felix forced a chuckle.

"What happened? I thought I heard something breaking…" A pair of large hazel eyes, presumably connected to the little-girl voice that had spoken, peeked around the edge of the broken door. They fell upon Turbo nervously. "He's awake?"

"You can come in, Vanellope," called Felix. "It's okay."

A young girl with a black ponytail swinging behind her head padded into the room, none too eagerly. Her head and eyes were disproportionately huge – clearly, her designers had been shooting for maximum cuteness when they'd created her. When she noticed Turbo studying her curiously, she met his gaze with an expression that, as best he could tell, was somewhere between Felix's overbearing concern and the soldier lady's overbearing suspicion.

"Who are you?" asked Turbo.

The girl flinched – or at least, he thought she did, for a split second. But if she'd really flinched, she checked herself so quickly that it left him doubting the accuracy of his eyes. "I'm Vanellope," she told him. "But I know who you are, Turbo."

 _Why would she know that?_ He was the most popular game in the arcade among its players, but amidst other characters, he was a laughable little nobody. Why would anyone have heard of him after… _thirty years?_ And what had happened during that time?

He struggled to think back. He'd gone to Tapper's, gotten a milkshake, gotten made fun of, gotten in an argument with the twins…and that was it. His most recent memory was going to bed last night ( _but it wasn't last night, was it?_ ). It was like he'd just slept three decades away without even dreaming.

His head began to pound, and he felt a staticky tingling start up in his limbs. It was becoming increasingly apparent that some information was being withheld from him. Why was there a thirty-year gap in his memory that, try as he might, he could only access as a complete blank? What was he missing?

And now they were all staring at him again. He couldn't tell what they were thinking, something he'd experienced before that usually frustrated him, but currently just freaked him out.

"Wh-what's wrong? Why are you all looking at me like that?" Turbo began to scoot himself off of the bed uneasily, slightly stronger now. "Look, I get it. I'm not wanted here. Let me just go back to my own game, and I'll be out of your way…"

"You don't have your own game anymore," stated the soldier lady gruffly.

Turbo froze.

Felix came forward then, clasping his hands. "Let me try to shed some light on this situation for you, Turbo. I know this is going to come as a shock to you…but Turbo Time was unplugged a long time ago. It happened very, ah, unexpectedly. Everyone thought you were dead, but then we stumbled across you, though you were badly damaged from everything that happened. So we patched you up and brought you here…"

Turbo was wondering if somehow his software had been brought to a grinding halt. He couldn't have twitched a muscle if he wanted to. "Impossible…" he gasped. "W-we were the most popular game in the arcade…!"

"Thirty years ago," corrected the soldier lady. "Things change."

"I did my best to get you back in working order, with the help of Vanellope here," continued Felix, patting the shoulder of the little girl. "There's going to be a few gaps in your memory…but nothing important. You've hardly been alive…"

"What about Jet and Set?" Turbo blurted.

Felix blinked. "Excuse me?"

"Jet and Set? My friends?! The other racers?!" Panic surged up in Turbo's throat. "If you found me, then you must have found them too…right?"

Felix and the soldier lady exchanged a look, and a touch of sympathy came to the face of the little girl. "I'm sorry, Turbo," murmured Felix. "We didn't find them. They're gone."

The blood drained from Turbo's head, and slowly, haltingly, he lowered himself back down on the bed.

 _Turbo Time was unplugged a long time ago._

 _Things change._

 _We didn't find them. They're gone…_

Jet and Set were two of the most annoying people that he'd ever met. He was usually so irritated by them, by the way that they stuck together like glue, even the little things like how they finished each other's sentences. Last night ( _no, not last night, thirty years ago_ ) Set had called him out on how nastily he often acted towards them. Maybe Turbo got snappish with them often, maybe he could be self-centered, but he still cared about them. They were his challengers, his co-ops, his NPCs…they were his friends.

He had complained about Turbo Time, too, about its deserted environment and awful graphics and boring racetrack and everything else, but at the end of the day, the game was his home. "Without me, Turbo Time would be nothing," he had used to brag. But the reverse was also true. He was nothing without it, just a game character without a home, without a purpose, and without anything to live for.

He bent his head forward as a thick pain choked his throat. No, no, he wasn't going to cry…crying was for weaklings, for losers, for kids…

At that point, the little girl hesitantly crept towards him. Her eyebrows crinkled with concern as she placed her tiny hands on the edge of his bed.

Turbo hardly noticed. He was sniffling now, involuntarily, and all of his efforts were going into not letting a sob escape from his mouth.

The little girl stood up on her tiptoes and placed her healthy peach-toned hand atop his dead white one. Her fingers twitched briefly, as if the touch had sent a tangible shock through her, but she continued to gaze up at him with her enormous hazel eyes. A face like that was enough to break anyone's reserve.

Turbo stifled a sob, and as he did, it happened – he glitched.

It took him off-guard, and there was almost no warning for it. His body started tingling again, as if static was building up inside him, and then he briefly unraveled into glowing red pixels. The transition was extremely fast, and in a little more than a second he had snapped back together, but it was plenty enough to be noticeable. The little girl drew away from him in shock. He gasped, turning to look down at himself so quickly that he forgot about hiding his teary yellow eyes. "Wh-what was that?!"

"A…a glitch," answered the little girl, stunned.

Felix spoke up, "Maybe when Vanellope touched you, she accidentally…no, she didn't, I was watching her." He frowned.

Turbo's breath caught. He told himself that all characters glitched every once in a while, it was just a part of technology, it was nothing to be afraid of…but his heart rate was going up, and even as he sat there inwardly reassuring himself, another burst of red pixels rippled through him.

He wrapped his arms around himself with a short cry, as if trying to hold his body together. "I-I can't be glitching!" he exclaimed fearfully. "I'm a lead – " The reality of his situation returned to him, and he released a shaky breath. "I mean, I _was_ a lead character…so I guess it doesn't matter anymore." He deflated.

At that, the little girl tilted up her chin. "I'm a lead character, too," she proclaimed, "and I glitch." To emphasize her point, she made herself vanish in a blast of blue electric energy, only to reappear a few yards away.

Turbo wiped his eyes, startled. "…What k-kind of game is this, anyway?"

"It's a racing game," she replied. "That's why you're here. Now that we've, uh, fixed you, you can be a racer again. Nowadays, we don't like people who get unplugged to just sit around in Game Central Station and mope. You've gotta work."

He must have been vulnerable enough that his doubt came through on his face.

"What's wrong?" The little girl pursed her lips. "Don't you like racing?"

"I love racing." He more than loved racing; it was as much a part of him as his helmet or his jumpsuit, the very thing that he had been created to do. "But I can't race if I'm – " Another glitch fizzed through his slight frame. "D-doing that!"

"Oh, that," she responded dismissively. "It's easy to control a glitch…after a while."

"Maybe Vanellope can show you," suggested Felix hopefully. "After all, she's had a lot of practice controlling her glitch!"

"I guess so…" Turbo shivered. His head seemed to have gained a considerable amount of weight out of nowhere, and he felt himself falling back against the pillow again.

This didn't escape the girl's attention, and she said, "You should sleep to regain your strength. Tomorrow we can work on your glitch training."

"If you say so." He blinked wearily. "And it's okay if I stay here?"

"Uh-huh."

The armored woman, who had been particularly quiet during the entire conversation, cleared her throat. "Come on, Vanellope," she beckoned, but the little girl hung back, as if she couldn't keep herself from gawking at the ghost boy.

"Vanellope," echoed Turbo. "You said that was your name, but…did you say who you are?"

"No, I didn't." She cleared her throat. "I'm President Vanellope von Schweetz, the leader of Sugar Rush."

"And…you said you already know who I am." He glitched, which dragged him out of an almost dozing stupor. "Aah – ! That feels so weird!"

"Yeah, I know…I've been doing that all my life. You'll get used to it." Vanellope's expression darkened slightly, or perhaps that was only Turbo's eyes playing a trick on him, because the room was beginning to dim as he succumbed to his physical and emotional exhaustion.

He was vaguely aware of Fix-It Felix examining the door that his wife had broken down with some embarrassment, muttering, "It's okay, I can fix it." The armored woman shouldered her gun and strode out with a last venomous glare in Turbo's reaction, while little Vanellope ran up to greet a much larger man out in the corridor who Turbo could barely see from his bed.

Nebulous, half-formed thoughts chased themselves in cul-de-sacs around his head. He was so preoccupied with thinking about Jet and Set, and Turbo Time, and Vanellope, and the people who had called him a ghost boy, and thirty years lost, that he didn't even notice when his eyes fell shut and the only images he was seeing existed in his mind's eye alone. So many things crowded around and ganged up on each other within his brain, and soon enough, he was thinking about nothing at all.


	4. Weirdos

_Weirdos_

* * *

 _Turbo was consumed by an incomparable agony, by a force that gnashed at his existence and warped the very components of his being. This wasn't like a mere stomachache or headache, in which the pain was concentrated within his physical self; something had wormed its way into his coding. He thrashed and struggled in the grip of the malfunction, pushing himself towards a pinpoint of light that he somehow knew would rescue him. At the very least, it was sure to transport him somewhere else, and anything was better than being here._

 _His efforts were made increasingly difficult by the fact that he was heading into an impossibly strong wind, some kind of push-pull force that made the sleeves of his jumpsuit snap erratically about his wrists and constantly tried to send him spinning off in the opposite direction. He was unable to tell if he was being sucked in by something at the center of this distorted world or shoved back by something at the edge of it, but he pressed on nonetheless. All he wanted was a release from this pain, and whether he died here or somehow made it to the exit, he would put an end to his suffering one way or another._

 _Since it was a dream, he abruptly transitioned into a new setting without bothering to wonder how he'd gotten there or even noticing that something was amiss at all: now he was in Game Central Station, only it was vacant, and the ceilings were too high, and the glaringly bright lights bleached out most of the color from the world around him. He fell into an automatic stride and started walking in the direction of home, but when he reached the portal, he stopped up short. The scrolling sign above the tunnel should have been spelling out "TO TURBO TIME," as it had for the past two years and four months. But there was nothing to label the entrance to his game. No sign at all, much less one that announced the area as Turbo Time._

" _Jet? Set?" he called, and despite the vastness of this dream version of Game Central Station, there was no echo to his voice at all. He received no reply._

 _Even if it was the middle of the day, Game Central Station was never empty. A few odd NPCs and homeless characters could always be found milling about here and there, and Surge Protector constantly patrolled the area, eyes peeled for signs of suspicious activity. But now Turbo was alone. There was no one around to praise him, to comfort him, or even to mock him by calling him a ghost boy._

 _Cautiously, he stepped into the dark entryway that had at one time deposited him to his home…_

… _only to realize that it was now an endless black hole, and he fell so rapidly that the air currents snatched away his scream –_

* * *

When Turbo came to his senses, he was sitting up in his strange new bed, clutching at his head, while various areas of his body exploded into scarlet pixels. He panted and lowered his arms, and as the fog in his mind was burned off, his glitching ceased. That was one downside of being such a light sleeper: any time he had a particularly vivid dream or a nightmare, there was a high probability that he would start talking or acting out the nonsensical events before his brain had fully woken up. He was just grateful that he'd managed to avoid actually getting out of bed this time. And if he'd screamed, at least nobody had come running.

He quizzed himself on the information that he had received yesterday. Turbo Time had been unplugged (that explained the nature of his dream) and apparently he'd almost died when it had; he had been reformatted by Fix-It Felix Jr. and taken to a game he'd never heard of called Sugar Rush; thirty years had passed; and everything and everyone that he'd ever known most likely no longer existed. Seemed like a fair summary to him.

He crackled into static again, causing him to flinch.

Oh, yes, and he was glitchy now, too. That must have been the cherry on top of the proverbial bad luck sundae.

Turbo swung his legs over the side of the sponge cake bed. If he was going to be living in this sugary game, then he figured that he was at least entitled to have a look around.

He eased open the thick gingerbread door and got his first view of the corridor beyond. Even from a few glimpses, he could gather that this building was huge, ornate, frilly, and constructed entirely out of sugary foodstuffs. He spotted candy cane pillars, gumdrop doorstops, fondant wallpaper, and who knew what else. He'd always been a big fan of chocolate milkshakes with whipped cream, but even the sight of all this junk food was giving him a stomachache.

He placed a hand over his abdomen, frowning. Actually, it was making him hungry. Could it really be possible that he hadn't eaten in thirty years?

Resolved to discover the whereabouts of the kitchen, he set off down the hall, passing rows upon rows of near-identical gingerbread doors. He was going to have a hard time finding his way back to his room later, that much was for sure. Hopefully he'd be able to meet up with Fix-It Felix or someone else who would be willing to help him.

Eventually, the hall slanted down into a curving staircase, then opened up into a room that was extremely, severely pink. Every object that had the capacity to be decorated was as lacy as a doily. A strip of carpet formed a path from the doors to a little alcove, where a piece of furniture that looked like a combination of a throne and a crown-shaped racecar had been placed. Windows and balconies were placed intermittently along the two longest walls, saturating the whole place with a pleasant, rosy light.

"What _is_ this place?" he wondered aloud. His confused query was amplified, bouncing back and forth across the domed ceiling.

As if in response, a round, green creature no taller than Turbo's waist entered the room by way of a second staircase. It had the appearance of a sentient piece of candy – a jawbreaker, maybe, or a gumball. It wielded a broom twice its size, which it robotically swept over the floor as it moved forward. All in all, it couldn't have looked more apathetic as it went about its work, and both its face and its movements appeared to lack any shred of motivation.

"Hey, you!" called Turbo. "Um, 'scuse me! Green gumball guy!"

The green creature tilted its face towards him drearily. In an instant, its dull eyes widened in shock, and it took off running. Before Turbo even had a chance to react, it had bolted off the way it had come, dragging its oversized broom behind it.

Turbo glitched.

"Uh…okay then, don't help me," he muttered under his breath. "Weirdo." Unconsciously, he rested a hand against his cheek. He had grown accustomed to having people stare at him when they saw his face for the first time, but no one had ever overreacted like the characters in this game. Had those thirty blanked-out years given him an even more grotesque appearance, or something?

There wasn't another person in sight, which caused Turbo to realize how vacant this whole giant building was. Besides the little green gumball thing, he hadn't seen hide nor hair of anyone, not even any NPCs.

Maybe everyone was outside instead…he padded over to the nearest balcony window to take a look. Just as he was about to step into the sunlight and get his first glimpse of this game's world, someone lifted him up by the collar of his jumpsuit.

Turbo yelped, thrashing in his captor's grip. "Hey, what's the big idea?!" he demanded.

As he slowly rotated around, his collar held in the grip of two enormous fingers, he found himself staring into the scowling face of an extremely large man with unruly hair and bare feet, who was dressed in a pair of threadbare overalls. "You!" growled the man. "I've been looking all over the place for you!"

"Take it easy, it's not like I went very far!" protested Turbo. "I didn't know that I wasn't supposed to leave! Put me down!"

He glitched again, at exactly the wrong moment. He dissolved into red static long enough to escape the grip of the large man and went crashing to the floor, knocking both of his knees in the process.

" _Oww_ ," hissed Turbo as he dragged himself back to his feet. He was having a hard enough time being a glitch without it causing him physical injury, as well.

The large man blinked in surprise, before his frown became even more pronounced. "Did you just do that on purpose?!"

"Oh, please," Turbo shot back. "If I had any say in the matter, I wouldn't be doing it at all!" He rubbed his sore knees indignantly. "Wait a minute, I think I recognize you. Aren't you the bad guy from the Fix-It Felix Jr. Game? Break-It Ralph, or something like that?"

"Wreck-It Ralph," the man corrected, placing his hands on his hips. "And you're not supposed to be wandering off, _Turbo_." He spoke the name as if it was an insult of the worst kind.

Turbo rolled his eyes. "Then someone should have told me that before! I just went out looking to see if I could find anybody. There's hardly anyone in this whole place!"

"That's because they're all down at the Royal Raceway," said Ralph scornfully, like Turbo should have known something so obvious. "For the daily Random Roster Race."

Oh, yeah. This was supposed to be a racing game. The only problem was, Turbo hadn't seen anything that even remotely resembled a race track, or a trophy, or even a car, which were the objects that he tended to associate with racing. "Where are you supposed to drive around here? Do they race through this building or something?"

Ralph shook his head and jabbed a finger towards the balcony window. "The tracks are outside."

" _Tracks_? As in, plural?" Turbo scampered to the edge of the balcony, curiosity piqued. The sight that awaited him was like nothing he had ever imagined.

It wasn't the creative usage of various candies that got to him, nor was it the glitter-graphics that packed in more detail than any game of his own era. No, the sheer _size_ of everything was what boggled his mind the most. The building in which he was standing was but a mere background feature of a vast sugary land, part of a landscape that included mountains and valleys and villages and labyrinths and who-knew-what-else just over the horizon. And there were indeed multiple racetracks. He spotted roads all over the place, doubling in on themselves in complex crisscrosses and squiggles, so unlike the plain oval course of Turbo Time or the endless long street of RoadBlasters.

"What the what?" he gasped. "How could any game even have enough memory to hold all of this?!"

Behind him, Ralph shrugged his massive shoulders, not nearly so impressed. "Technology has improved a lot since 1987."

Turbo was still so enamored with the view that he hardly heard the response. Now he was able to pick out the racers, who were visible as little more than zooming dots shredding up the courses and leaving trails of dust behind them. They dodged obstacles and soared over gaps and did flips in the air – all of it looked infinitely more exciting that puttering around the same old circular path day after day. He grinned as he imagined himself getting down there to join in on the fun. "Can I go to the tracks and watch the racers today?"

"What?! Uh, no, absolutely not!" Ralph crossed his massive arms sternly.

Turbo turned around, his face pulling into a frustrated glower. "Why not?"

"It's not a good idea for you to go down there. You're just gonna have to listen to me on this one." Ralph wasn't showing one drop of sympathy towards the would-be racer. "I'm in charge of you right now, and I was told that you're not supposed to leave the castle, so – "

"You're babysitting me?!" interrupted Turbo. "Come on, that is so unfair! What do you think I'm gonna do that's so bad I need a babysitter?! Don't you have your own job or something?!"

"Well, obviously," answered Ralph evenly, his tense posture betraying the anger that he was holding back. "But it's the end of the day. Felix and Calhoun went to go watch Vanellope race, and normally I'd go, too, but I didn't feel comfortable knowing that the only one here to keep an eye on you was Sour Bill."

Turbo stopped up short and winced as another glitch rippled through him. "Oh, great. I slept the whole day away."

"They finished up with you pretty close to morning in the first place," retorted Ralph curtly, before placing his hands on his hips. He eyeballed Turbo for so long that it seemed he was interpreting the task of "keeping an eye on him" quite literally.

Turbo's nerves prickled with annoyance. "Well, okay, as you can see, I'm perfectly fine! So you can just…go home, or whatever!" He flapped his hands in a shooing motion.

Ralph barely moved, as solid as the brick building that he was routinely tasked with destroying. "This is my home."

"Yeah, right. I know this isn't your game!"

"It's not my _game_ , it's my _home_ ," he corrected. "One of my homes. Sometimes we all stay here with Vanellope, sometimes we move to my place, or to Felix's. Right now it looks like we're gonna be here for a while because _you're_ here."

"Lucky me," muttered Turbo. He turned on his heels and strode back inside, grateful that he was slim enough to brush by Ralph without too much trouble.

Ralph watched him go with challengingly arched eyebrows. "You know, your voice sounds different," he remarked.

Turbo pressed his lips together. "Different, like how? What do you mean? I haven't noticed any difference myself."

The wrecker's breath hitched. "Oh. Uh, just forget I said anything."

Turbo frowned, once again overcome by the sneaking suspicion that something was being withheld from him. "All of you people here are weirdos."

* * *

Ralph escorted Turbo to the kitchen for breakfast/dinner/whatever, where the estranged racer fixed himself some graham crackers smothered with cream cheese icing. The meal was more sugar-laden than he was accustomed to, but tasty nonetheless. He had finished eating and was licking the white frosting from his equally white fingers when Ralph spoke again:

"So, Turbo, remind me of something here. What's your intended age?"

Turbo's tongue darted briefly around his mouth. "Intended age?" he repeated.

"You know, the age that your programmers designed you as. How old are you supposed to be?"

He hesitated, reluctant to answer the question. He was already irritated because he'd been assigned a babysitter; the last thing he needed was for this wrecking guy to know that he actually was a teenager. Then again, Ralph probably already suspected or knew that, and was only asking as a formality. "I dunno, maybe around fourteen or fifteen?"

Ralph's eyes widened. "… _fifteen_?!"

"Uh, yeah. That's my best guess." Turbo glitched once again, but did his best to ignore it. "What, did you think I was older?"

Ralph shook his head in bewilderment. "I don't exactly know what I thought…but I mean, fifteen?! You're just a kid!"

Turbo's eyes narrowed, and another indignant glitch zipped down his frame. "I'm not a kid!"

But Ralph paid no mind to the statement of protest, as he was still wrapped up in what appeared to be a mixture of surprise and frustration. "After all of this…fif-freaking-teen years old..." he muttered under his breath.

"What are you talking about?" demanded Turbo.

"Nothing, nothing!" Ralph exhaled harshly. "Why don't you just go back to your room for now? Somebody will come in and get you later."

"What, you're putting me in a time-out now?" snapped Turbo. "I didn't do anything except tell you my age, because you asked me for it! This whole morning you've been treating me like I did something wrong! Well, newsflash – it's not my fault that my game got unplugged and almost killed me! I didn't _choose_ to come here!"

Ralph just stared, his face masked by an unreadable expression. "Just go to your room, Turbo."

Turbo glitched furiously and stomped off. Just as he exited the kitchen, he could have sworn that he heard Ralph mumble, "You have no idea what you just said, you dumb kid."

* * *

Oddly enough, Turbo overheard a similar snippet of a conversation about thirty minutes, once again involving Ralph. As he knocked about in his room with nothing in particular to do, waiting for something to happen, his ears pricked at the sound of voices just outside his door. Then he realized that they were talking about him…

He tiptoed over and pressed the side of his head against the door, bound and determined to remain undetected.

"…gotten ourselves in way over our heads, Felix!" lamented Ralph. "I knew from the start that this was a bad idea!"

"I know it seems a little overwhelming now," answered Fix-It Felix's voice soothingly, "but it was the right thing to do, and that's the important thing."

"Still. If he was an adult, it would be hard enough, but he's _fifteen_! Who wants to deal with a stubborn teenager?!"

"Honestly, Ralph, I don't know why his age surprises you so much. I had a passing acquaintanceship with him thirty years ago, and even if I never knew exactly how old he was, it was easy to see that he was young. And consider what he did…it definitely seems like something a child would do, don't you think?"

"I guess so. But I don't know if it makes me feel better or worse that all of this trouble was caused by a spoiled snot-nosed little kid being…a spoiled snot-nosed little kid!"

"Keep your voice down!" hissed Felix.

Turbo was scowling now, feeling slight glitches bubbling beneath his skin. It had been thirty years since he'd last interacted with anyone outside of his own game, and while a lot had changed in that time, apparently people were still against him for no reason whatsoever. Not much had changed. Why had his developers thought it was a good idea to make him so young?! Didn't they realize how difficult they would be making his life?! Now no matter what he did, no matter what era he was in, nobody was going to see him as anything more than a _kid_.

Beside his ear, the doorknob clicked.

He gasped and scrambled back as the door opened a sliver, and he folded his arms behind his back, trying to look as nonchalant as possible so that Felix or Ralph wouldn't suspect that he'd been eavesdropping. But it wasn't either of them. Instead, the little black-ponytailed girl from yesterday stuck her head into the room.

"Oh, it's you," said Turbo. "Penelope, right?"

" _Vanellope_ ," she corrected, thrusting out her lips in an irritated pout. "Let's go, Turbo. You and I are going out for some lessons."

She plunged a hand into her pocket and tossed a limp, black object at him. Turbo reached up and caught the item easily: it was a pair of goggles, like the kind worn by pilots to prevent the wind from throwing dust into their eyes. He realized that in this game, since the ground was actually textured with dirt, goggles were probably useful when you were on the road driving an open-roofed kart all day. The straps felt uncomfortably foreign in his hand.

"Driving lessons?" he said, and sniffed dismissively. "I don't need driving lessons. I already know how to race."

Vanellope shook her head, her back already turned towards him as she strode into the hall. "No, not driving lessons. Glitch lessons."


	5. Glitch lessons

_Glitch lessons_

* * *

"So, Turbo, are you really only fifteen years old?"

Turbo had been spending the past five minutes staring at the back of Vanellope's head as she escorted him through the cavernous building that he apparently lived in now, and he was beginning to wonder if she had some problem with making eye contact with him. Also, if even a little girl was about to start patronizing him for his age, then he was going to blow a fuse. "Yeah, I am," he replied. "Why is that so weird? It's like everybody here can't believe it."

"I guess," she answered, seemingly choosing her words carefully, "we just didn't expect that the lead character of a racing game would be so young."

"You said you're the lead character of a racing game and you're, what, five?"

"I'm _nine_!" she declared angrily, spinning on her heels to face him for the first time since they had left his bedroom.

He shrugged dismissively. "Same difference. You're a little kid and you're the leader of a racing game, is what I'm saying. If it's so perfectly normal for you to be nine, then why is everyone acting like it's strange that I'm fifteen?"

"Well, it makes sense for me to be a kid," she huffed. "That's the whole point of the candy theme. All us racers are supposed to look like cute little kids dressed like pieces of candy. But you…" She trailed off tellingly.

"…yeah, I'm a creeper. I get it," grumbled Turbo. This sort of thing was exactly what infuriated him; thirty years later, and through no fault of his own, he was even more of a ghost boy in a world overrun by complex human characters. "This might come as a surprise to you, but back when my game was developed, game designers didn't have glitter-graphics like you've got here. I can't help it if this was the best they could do on me."

Vanellope squinted, pushing herself up to her black-booted tiptoes. "You do look young, though. I can see it in your face," she remarked. "I wonder why I never noticed that before?"

"Uh, maybe because you've only seen me one other time before now?" He fizzled into red pixels just as he spoke the last word, and he flinched involuntarily, his muscles tightening.

"Jeez, you are glitchy, aren'cha?" She twirled around again and marched on, bringing him into the atrium that he had paid a brief visit to that morning. "Here's your first lesson of the day. Don't freak out or tense up when you glitch, 'cause that'll just make you glitch more."

"That's hard, though." Turbo rubbed his shoulders, trying to alleviate his tenseness. "I hate the way it feels."

"It's not hurting you, is it?"

"No…but it feels really weird! Like I'm about to break into a million pieces."

"You _are_ breaking into a million pieces, g- _doy_. You just go back together after a second." By now they'd reached the throne room, and she skipped over to a stained-glass door set into the opposite wall and went to work tugging it open. As he had suspected, it was one of the main exits, and he soon found himself confronted by the candy world he had glimpsed before now spread out like a childish fantasy in front of him.

"Gee, that makes me feel better," he mumbled, now finding that a mental image of himself exploding into pieces had become entrapped in his head.

There was a path leading from the door to a much wider road, which was a mere few paces away, and as he continued to follow her he got his first decent look at the building that he'd spent the day in. It wasn't a house, or a mansion, or even a hotel: it was a castle, immense and gleaming with a frosting-like resin in the glow of the lemon drop sun. Turbo realized (admittedly late) that if Vanellope really was the lead character of this game, then the castle was most likely her home, which meant that he had been staying here as her personal guest. And she was also probably the reason why he'd been rescued from Turbo Time in the first place…

Something in his conscience was prompting him to thank her, but she had been nothing but a know-it-all brat to him thus far, so he wasn't about to display any gratitude just yet. So instead he asked, "What's a _president_ doing living in a castle?"

"I used to be a princess, but I changed it," she called back, having already reached the road. There was a go-kart awaiting her there, sloppily decorated with a random assortment of icing globs and sprinkles and glitter, and she patted its side possessively as she clambered in.

Turbo couldn't help but snort at the poor construction of the vehicle, already beginning to miss his sleek, elegant red racer from Turbo Time. "And what's a princess or a president doing driving that hunk of junk?"

She flared. "How dare you insult my kart?! It's special!" She plopped down in the driver's seat, glowering at him, as if she thought a face as cherubic as hers had any potential to be menacing. "There's a royal go-kart that was programmed into the game, but I never use it. I like this one better. Now, hop on, or else I'm gonna drive off without you and not feel bad about it at all."

His little snub nose crinkled distastefully. "There's only room for one person."

"You can sit on the back. Come on, I've done this loads of times before! I won't go fast enough to knock you off…" Her hazel eyes darkened a shade. "That is, unless you insult my car again. Then I'll have to throw you to the side of the road."

Scowling, he begrudgingly secured himself as best he could on the back of the kart, not thrilled about having to hitch a ride on something that looked as if it had been cobbled together from bakery scraps. But he relaxed somewhat as Vanellope shifted into gear and began driving down the road. The vehicle must have been equipped with a good engine, because it ran much more smoothly than he'd anticipated, and its driver was admirably skillful and controlled for someone her age. He was able to lean back somewhat and enjoy the scenery; all in all, it would have been a perfectly pleasant ride had he not been forced to grip his perch so tightly that his knuckles somehow got even whiter.

After a trip of about ten minutes in length, Vanellope pulled onto a side road that in turn brought them to what was unmistakably a racetrack. It looped back in on itself in a familiar way, and Turbo spotted a checkered strip on the ground, located directly below a banner that spelled out START on one side and FINISH on the other. He perked up, beginning to feel more in his element.

"This is Sweet Ride," explained Vanellope. "The simplest course in the game. It's good for beginners." She eased to a stop just past the start/finish line, where two things were awaiting them, one more welcome than the other: the first was a generic-looking go-kart, constructed of different sweets just like every other item in this game, and the second was Wreck-It Ralph, who stood by the kart with his arms crossed and a suspicious frown plastered over his face.

Turbo groaned. "Oh, great. What are _you_ doing here?"

"I'm supervising you two," replied Ralph stiffly. "You didn't think that we were going to trust you to be alone with Vanellope just yet, did you?"

"Apparently you can't even trust me to be alone in an empty building right now." Turbo glitched, then grimaced as the distortions in his code rippled the kart beneath him. "But I still don't know exactly _why_ you're all treating me this way."

"Oh, you'll be able to go out on your own soon enough," interjected Vanellope. "Once you're a real racer. But before that can happen, you have to learn how to control your glitch." She directed her pudgy little finger towards the other car. "That's one of the game's generic default karts, but you can use it for now. It'll be good while you get used to driving again. Go ahead, get in."

Turbo slipped from his seat and padded over to his new vehicle, examining it with an experienced racer's knowledgeable eye. It didn't appear to be nearly as aerodynamic as his previous car, and he still couldn't figure out how something made of cookies and shortbread could run in the first place, but the controls were straightforward enough. Brake, gas, clutch, gear shift. Push-button start and a normal-looking steering wheel. Seemed fairly easy.

He lifted himself into the driver's chair and adjusted the interior as best he could. The car's entire layout and size had been designed for someone Vanellope's size, and while he wasn't too much taller than her, his proportions were much different. Finally, he felt as if he'd be able to put his foot on the pedals without stretching his leg to its maximum length.

Vanellope had come over now, and she was peering in at him. "First, press the button to start it up," she instructed.

He scoffed. "Look, glitter-graphics, I know how to drive. Okay? I've been racing since before your code was even a gleam in the eye of your developers!"

She blinked, and then exchanged a glance with Ralph. "Okay. If you say so. But you might want to actually use those goggles I gave you, unless you want the road debris to gouge out your eyes."

Turbo was fairly sure that racetrack grit wasn't enough to cause permanent ocular damage like that, but he fished the goggles out of his jumpsuit pocket, deciding not to take the risk. The black band slipped easily over his helmet, as if it had already been adjusted for him beforehand. As he secured the lenses over his eyes, he couldn't help but think about how odd it was to have a layer of clear plastic separating him from the road. Back in Turbo Time, he had never worn any protective gear other than his pre-programmed helmet and jumpsuit.

His hand hovered uncertainly over the controls for a moment; then he jabbed the start button, and the engine rumbled into alertness beneath him. So far, so good. He twisted the joystick into first gear and then nudged the gas pedal with his toe, easing himself forward. He was gripping the steering wheel with unusual rigidity, and he realized that he was nervous about this.

Vanellope watched all of this with her hands on her hips, eyes half-closed in smug indifference, and Ralph didn't look too impressed either.

Feeling miffed by the way they looked at him as if he were an amateur, Turbo shifted into second gear and increased pressure on the accelerator. The track curved up ahead, and he breezed around the turn effortlessly. He would prove to them that he didn't need a warm-up, because after all, he was the greatest racer ever – this was what he had been made to do, and even if he hadn't practiced in thirty years, he was still the best of the best. He urged the kart faster, eager to once again feel the adrenaline pounding in his veins as he amped up the speed…

"HEY, GENIUS!" yelled Vanellope from behind him. "I WOULDN'T DO THAT IF I WERE YOU!"

Turbo gritted his teeth, determined to ignore her. As he'd said before, Vanellope was significantly younger than him, both in intended age and in actual age. He wasn't going to let her boss him around because she thought she knew more about this than he did…

And, of course, that was when his body began to crackle with static again. He stiffened in his seat, willing the disturbance to go away, but it was too late: he was already fizzing into pixels, and this time, it was severe enough to make the kart glitch along with him. He cried out in a mixture of panic and dismay, promptly losing control of the vehicle. When he veered off of the road not five seconds later, the front of the car smacked into a nearby jawbreaker without enough momentum to break anything, but just hard enough to give him a nasty bout of whiplash.

He sat there, dazed, wondering how in the world he could have made such a stupid mistake. Sure, he could get thrown for a loop whenever an obstacle was tossed at him, but he had never just spun out randomly like that in Turbo Time! A chill settled in the pit of his stomach as he realized that right now, his own body was the challenge that he had to get past…and he couldn't control it.

The sound of an engine revving startled him.

Vanellope, now with a pair of hot pink goggles strapped around her head, had returned to her car and was now zooming around the track. He had considered her to be good for her age on the trip here, but now that he really had a chance to see her in action, he was starting to understand that age had nothing to do with it. She was undoubtedly an excellent racer, nine years old or not. She followed the course so precisely that her kart might have been running on rails, nonchalantly adjusting to every little dip or bump that she encountered, only gaining speed when she came to anything resembling a dangerous obstacle. And she glitched, too – only instead of it hindering her as it had Turbo, she was doing it intentionally, using it to jet forward and teleport herself further along the track. She didn't give one involuntary glitch the entire time.

And when she had finally finished, she slowed to a halt where he had crashed, and she pursed her lips at him as he lifted his goggles to gape at her.

"When you can do that, you can go as fast as you want to," she declared. "But until then, you're gonna listen to me. Understand?"

Turbo scowled, muttered a halfhearted confirmation under his breath, and put his car into reverse.

* * *

He never did get to race that day.

He didn't even spend much time in the generic borrowed car. Vanellope seemed to agree that the issue for him lay not in his driving but in his glitching, and so she attempted to pass on her infinite glitch-control wisdom to him in the hopes that he could quickly overcome the problem. It didn't work out so well. "It's all in your head!" she proclaimed about a hundred times during the lesson. "Just concentrate, tell yourself that you're in control, and you will be!" Meanwhile, Ralph sat down on a large gumdrop and watched them silently, suspicious eyes half-hidden behind his bushy auburn eyebrows.

Turbo legitimately tried to take Vanellope's advice into account, but it was no use; his glitch was still too new and raw and erratic. It seemed to fluctuate in conjunction with his emotions. Every time a splash of crimson pixels rippled through him, he would experience a fleeting moment of panic, usually followed by hot frustration pressing at his eyes and throat, and this created a vicious cycle leading to more intense and more frequent glitches. Trying to focus on them didn't help. If anything, it just made him even more angry when his efforts inevitably failed. And the worst part was that, as the little munchkin was constantly reminding him, he couldn't properly race until he could control his glitch.

After an hour of futile training, he absolutely couldn't take it anymore. Even looking at the kart he couldn't drive was torturous to him. All he wanted was to move, to go fast, to be a racer again, but he was being held back by a freak malfunction in his coding. It was infinitely worse than being a ghost boy. At least other people teasing hadn't kept him from doing the thing that he was meant to do.

Finally, Vanellope told him that he'd gotten himself too worked up and she couldn't possibly teach him any more today. She gave him a ride back to the castle while Ralph transported the other car – since he was too big to fit inside of it, he lifted it up in his massive hands as if it weighed no more than a plate of cookies and carried it back, lagging some distance behind them. Turbo didn't say a word during the entire journey. He was too busy quietly trembling and glitching, unsure whether to be furious or depressed about the day's events…he was miserable either way.

"Come on, don't be too disappointed," Vanellope trilled at him as she pulled into an underground garage beneath the castle. "It took me a while to learn how to get a handle on my glitch! I bet you'll start getting the hang of it soon, Pajama Boy." She giggled.

His eyes, which had been bitterly squinting, widened until they were so round and yellow that they looked like headlights. " _What_ did you just call me?!" he demanded.

"Pajama Boy!" she repeated gleefully, indicating his jumpsuit with a dip of her head. "'Cause, y'know, that looks awfully comfy-cozy to be a racing uniform!"

" _Haven't you insulted me enough already?!_ " he snarled, enraged glitches exploding all across his body, and for a moment, he almost didn't recognize his own voice.

Some of the blush in her rosy cheeks drained away, and something he hadn't expected to see from her – something like true terror –made a brief, flickering appearance. "I-it was just a joke…"

He shook his head briskly in the hopes of clearing it, wondering if perhaps the static pixels were interfering with his brain, as well as his body. "Well, I'm not in the mood!" he cried, and he stormed back to his room in a huff, fuming, his fists tight bludgeons at his sides.

Surprisingly, it wasn't all that difficult finding his way back to his bedroom, but it seemed that one last obstacle had been placed to avert him. Fix-It Felix Jr. and the crazy soldier lady who was apparently his wife were standing around in hallway, and Turbo had the uncomfortable sense that they'd been waiting for him and Vanellope to return. The soldier lady only drilled through him with a menacing glare – much like Ralph, she acted as if she had some sort of a grudge against him – but Felix smiled brightly and approached the estranged racer with a hopeful gleam in his eyes. "Oh, you're back! How did it go?"

"Awfully," mumbled Turbo, trying to edge around the duo and into the hall.

He'd hoped that the Fix-It would leave it at that, but of course, it wasn't so simple. "Really? What happened?" asked Felix, and he sounded so truly concerned as he spoke the question that Turbo snapped. He spun on his heels and was shouting before he could stop himself.

"What happened is that I'm useless now! What happened is that _I can't even drive!_ " he shouted, the pent-up words spewing out of his mouth as uncontrollably as his glitches. He scowled at the sound of his voice shaking, and managed to throttle back to a tone of cold anger. "I hate being a glitch and I hate being here and I want to go _home_. And I wish you'd just left me wherever I was instead of trying to fix me."

Felix slowly lifted a gloved hand over his heart, his mouth creasing sympathetically. "Turbo…"

Turbo flickered erratically into red electricity, and then he took off into his room, his shoes squeaking on the marbled hard candy floor. He slammed the door and threw himself down on his sponge cake bed dejectedly, his face landing downwards in the despicably soft marshmallow pillow. Its texture had suddenly become intolerable to him, so he flung it on the ground, then rolled over to glare at the ceiling like it was personally responsible for his current misery.

It wasn't right to yell at Felix, but Turbo found it hard to feel sorry. Felix had always been trying to _fix_ the teen racer during the five years that they'd lived in the arcade together, or at least that was how it felt, which was why Turbo had taken to avoiding him. He didn't like to think of himself as broken, although he was, wasn't he? Too obtuse to realize when he was being insulted right to his face. Too weird to make friends, or even to realize what exactly was so weird about him. And of course, too creepy-looking to pass for human.

 _No wonder the gamers got sick of me_.

He draped an arm over his eyes tiredly. In the end, he wasn't bothered by Felix attempting to fix him, or at least, that was the least bothersome part of things. What really got him was that he'd somehow survived the unplugging of his game, made it all the way here, and not only could he not remember it – he'd also somehow come out even more broken on the other side.


	6. Looking for attention

_Looking for attention_

* * *

"Get into a peaceful state of mind. Like zen or something."

"I'm trying."

Glitch glitch.

"Not good enough! You just did it again!"

"I'm doing the best I can here!"

"Then do better!"

A repressed growl built up in the back of Turbo's throat, but he held it there, instead contenting himself with simply glowering at Vanellope. It was his third day of glitch training, and so far, the only thing he had achieved was succeeding in not breaking down again or showing his mounting frustration in a form other than anger. It wasn't just the glitching that grated on his nerves, but also everything else about his new lifestyle: the isolation of being forced to spend every day under strict supervision in the castle, the constant suspicious glares that Ralph and Sergeant Calhoun (AKA the crazy soldier lady) were subjecting him to, and the disorienting transition of trying to come to terms with the loss of his game and his coworkers. But in its own devious way, being a glitch was the worst part of it all.

Previously, whenever Turbo had gotten upset or overly emotional, he'd raced. He had taken his car out to the expanse of the Turbo Time track, slammed his foot on the gas pedal, and gone around and around in circles until adrenaline had washed his inhibitions away and confidence began to return to him. Sometimes Jet or Set would compete with him during this ritual, but it was just as effective when he was alone, as well. Now he was trying to deal with a set of infuriating, depressing, and frankly confusing life changes, and he had no coping mechanism. His glitch was now denying him both purpose and release.

At the moment, he and Vanellope were at Sweet Ride again, where they'd returned each day for lessons. Turbo didn't see much point in doing glitch training at a racetrack, since he hadn't properly raced once since his reformatting. Regardless, Ralph still carried the generic kart to this course every day; the wrecker was currently sitting on a jawbreaker some distance away from them, observing without much interest.

"Try again, Pajama Boy!" chided Vanellope in her tippy singsong inflections, using her favorite derogatory alias for him. She was spinning around in her black boots, occasionally glitch-teleporting to various points in his field of vision just to be irritating.

"I'll try again when I'm good and ready, glitter-graphics," snapped Turbo.

She snickered. "If you're gonna insult me, you should at least choose a less pretty name! Now come on, close your eyes. Clear your mind and focus…"

Turbo squeezed his eyes shut and tried to picture what transcending to a higher state of being might look like, because he honestly had no idea. He had spent his entire life around arcade games that were neither particularly violent nor especially peaceful. No one made consoles based around meditation or Chinese rock gardens, so how would he even know what it felt like when he was relaxed enough to be in control of his glitch? That is, if he _ever_ became relaxed enough to gain any control.

As he stood there, making a concentrated effort to focus on not glitching, he knew that Vanellope would be creeping around him now. His eyes were still closed so that he couldn't see her, and she moved quietly enough that her footsteps were inaudible, which was all a part of this "training exercise." While his mind was supposedly cleared, she would jump out and try to spook him. If his brain preparations had worked, then he would be able to avoid bursting into pixels when he was startled. Simple.

He hadn't managed to accomplish this easy goal yet, although he'd been working practically nonstop at it for the past two days. Their collective theory that he glitched more when he got emotional was proving to be absolutely correct.

Just as he was pondering his failure, Vanellope leapt out at him again. He'd known that she had to be coming, and he had stiffened his body in preparation for her "attack," but he was caught off guard once again – and scarlet code malfunctions rippled through his body in sync with his flashes of automatic fear.

"No good!" She sighed and took a step back, shaking her head disapprovingly as if at the repeated antics of a naughty pupil. "You're still not getting it."

"Aaaaaah…!" Turbo released an incoherent yell of rage, sprang to his feet, and delivered a swift kick to the bumper of his borrowed kart. The vehicle rocked on its wheels, but being the three-foot-tall glitchy weakling that he was, he didn't do any actual damage to it. Still, it felt good to finally hit something, even if his foot was now throbbing slightly. He plopped down on a gumdrop, his breaths hissing angrily between his teeth.

Ralph looked up at this miniature tantrum, seemingly amused by the racer's reaction.

"Jeez, Turbo, calm down," said Vanellope. "It's not that big of a deal."

"It is that big of a deal!" cried Turbo testily. "You try being a racer who can't race and tell me that it's not a big deal!"

Her nose crinkled up into an expression of dark distaste. "You've only been a glitch for like four days. Soon you won't even notice when it happens. Then it won't affect you when you're driving, and then you'll have enough control over it that you won't do it at all. And then you'll be able to use it to your advantage!" She disintegrated in a flash of blue static, only to reappear beside him half a second later. "Like me."

He scowled, refusing to look her in the eyes. "I hate being a glitch," he muttered.

"That's sad, 'cause you are a glitch, and you shouldn't hate being you." She twirled a strand of her black hair around a chubby little finger. "If it makes you feel any better, you're gonna get a break tomorrow. I'm going to enter tomorrow afternoon's noncompetitive. I haven't raced in one all week, and now my friends are starting to get suspicious."

His scowl may have deepened.

"Oh, what, are you going to miss me that much, Pajama Boy?" Her little pink tongue jabbed out at him. "It's okay, we'll be right back to glitch lessons over the weekend!"

"It's not that." Turbo sighed and stretched out his legs, flinching slightly as yet another glitch bubbled across his body. "I'm not exactly partial to your training, glitter-graphics, but it's better than being stuck up in the castle all day. It's so boring! And everyone treats me like I'm some sort of freak – when they even bother to pay attention to me at all, that is." His shoulders deflated.

She tilted her head curiously. "Felix doesn't treat you badly," she pointed out.

"No," he admitted, "but he's never really around, either." The only one who was ever around was that green gumball guy, AKA Sour Bill, who literally hadn't spoken a single word to Turbo and looked at him as little as possible. Mostly Sour Bill would just periodically confirm Turbo's location by peeping from around a corner, then take off before anyone could engage him.

Vanellope settled down for her knees. "Maybe once your driving gets steadier, I can show you around Sugar Rush!" she suggested. "Or, y'know, you could just hitch a ride on the back of my car like you usually do. Or we could walk."

Turbo cracked a smile. "Walking? What's that?" he joked weakly, and was pleased to see that this comment extracted a giggle from her.

Ralph chose this time to lumber over, presumably having sensed the direction that their conversation was taking. "I guess it's okay for you to show him around, kid," he told Vanellope. "But remember the number one rule. No going near the Royal Raceway, or anywhere else where the other racers might be hanging out."

Turbo frowned and glitched.

"What's wrong?" asked Vanellope.

"Why don't you want anybody to see me?" he demanded.

Ralph's eyes widened slightly, and he hurriedly answered, "I never said that we didn't want anybody to – "

"No, but it's beyond obvious," Turbo interrupted. "You keep me locked up in the castle, you don't want me to go anywhere near the other characters, and I'm pretty sure that you and Felix and Sergeant Calhoun are the only other people who even know I'm here. What's going on? Why am I such a big secret?"

Vanellope was sucking on her hoodie drawstrings anxiously. "Well…the other racers…might not be very accepting of you," she explained haltingly. "I mean, don't get me wrong, they're my friends and I like 'em a lot. But I don't know how they would react to…someone like you."

He glitched.

"But if you can show them that you're a good racer, they'll get over it!" she continued hurriedly. "And they'll have to listen to me if I tell them to let you race. I'm the president, after all."

His eyes dropped bitterly. "…I guess leaving the game is out of the question, too, huh?"

"Leaving the game is _definitely_ out of the question!" proclaimed Ralph sternly, before quickly adding, "And why would you want to leave, anyway? The game lineup is pretty much completely new. Anyone you would've known before is probably gone."

 _That's right_ , Turbo thought. _They're gone. Just like Jet and Set_ …

He tried to avoid dwelling on his deceased friends, but without anything else to occupy him during the day, it was becoming harder and harder to not think about them.

"Hey," Vanellope piped up, with uncharacteristic amounts of sympathy (meaning: any at all) in her voice. "It's okay, Turbo. Don't be sad. I will show you around, and you will get to be a racer again, and maybe one day you'll even get to go back into Game Central Station! Until then, you just have to practice so you can get the hang of your glitch. I know that you'll be able to control it soon."

"Thanks, glitter-graphics," sighed Turbo, dredging up a smile from the bottom of his heart.

"No problem, Pajama Boy." She glitched herself into a standing position. "Now, c'mon, let's get home. Felix doesn't like us to be late for dinner."

She skipped back to her car, and he watched her for a moment before getting to his feet. Out of everyone he'd come to know since being brought here, Vanellope was the hardest for him to get an accurate read on. Felix was a kind, innocent, and somewhat naïve fatherly type who could be bashful around strangers but always had faith in his fixing abilities; Calhoun was a tough, no-nonsense, and constantly defensive drill sergeant who only ever let her guard down slightly around the people who she really and thoroughly trusted; and Ralph just seemed to be a grump, albeit one with an obvious soft spot for little Vanellope. But Turbo wasn't sure what to think about Vanellope herself. Sometimes, perhaps even a majority of the time, she acted like a typical hyper nine-year-old, but sometimes she'd be trying to train him and he would briefly snap at her or something, and she would completely transform. A frightened, traumatized child would peek out from behind her eyes, and it was during those moments that he became uncomfortably aware of the fact that she was wary of him – maybe not quite afraid, but certainly suspicious. And in another way, what he was noticing was curiosity, a desire to figure out who he really was…in other words, she was asking the same questions about him that he was about her.

Or maybe he was just seeing things that weren't really there, the same way that, thirty years ago, he'd constantly been missing the things that should have been obvious.

* * *

"Oh, I see you're all back, and – Vanellope, what have I said about putting your racing goggles on the table?" Felix sighed and placed his hands on his hips. There was an apron tied around his waist emblazoned with the words _Kiss the Cook_. He was the one who took control of the Sugar Rush kitchen for a few hours each evening to prepare dinner, partly because he was the only one who seemed to be able to procure foodstuffs other than sweets, and partly because no one else had any idea of how to cook. He fussed at Vanellope, Ralph, and Turbo as they entered the dining room, while Calhoun looked on from her seat at the table with an amused smirk. They were an odd pair, but as far as Turbo could see, they seemed genuinely happy together.

"Okay, okay!" submitted Vanellope, snatching her goggles off of the table and tucking them into the pouch of her sweatshirt. "Jeez, what are you, my dad or something?"

"Or something." Felix smiled. They were all well aware that if Vanellope considered anyone to be her father figure, then it was probably Ralph. "Go wash your hands, all three of you. Dinner in five."

In addition to Felix and Calhoun being a strange but content married couples, there were other connections between Turbo's – supervisors? hosts? whatever you wanted to call them – that went beyond the nuptial. Ralph and Felix were practically brothers, their time together split between affection and arguments. Vanellope had no parents of her own, but had still ended up with someone besides her presidential attendants to look after her. And Ralph and Vanellope's relationship fluctuated; sometimes they were best friends, sometimes more like a niece with her fun-loving uncle, and sometimes you couldn't look at them without seeing a father and daughter. In short, the four of them had somehow become a close-knit family, albeit one in which the parental roles shifted between three people depending on what needed to be done, with Vanellope adding a fair amount of both sugar and spice to the dish.

Turbo wasn't a part of the family. He was an outsider that had been brought here for reasons he still didn't understand, and as he sat quietly at the dinner table that night and picked at his food, an envy stirred inside of him that wasn't unlike the jealousy he had once felt towards Road Blasters.

He _was_ jealous, he admitted to himself, pushing the food around his plate with his yellow eyes downcast. He was jealous of Vanellope – not because she was a good racer, not because she had control over her glitch, but because of her family. She was a kid, and she was allowed to act her age because there were people around to take care of her. Turbo had always tried to assert that he didn't need anyone to be there for him, as long as he was a winner and could be there for himself, but as he watched Vanellope and Ralph banter back and forth at each other in a contest to devise the most creative insults, while Felix and Calhoun smiled into each other's eyes just like a couple of parents coming home from a long day at work…he couldn't lie to himself. Turbo wanted something like this, and maybe he always had.

"Say, are you all right, Turbo?" asked Felix. "You've hardly touched your dinner."

Turbo glanced up with a startled glitch, not having expected anyone to address him. "Huh? Oh, yeah, I'm fine. I'm just…not very hungry." He nudged his plate away halfheartedly.

Felix clicked his tongue sympathetically. "Getting discouraged from the glitch training, huh? It'll be okay! I'm sure that with a little more practice, you'll be on that racetrack in no time!"

"So everybody keeps telling me," murmured Turbo, his tone implying that he didn't believe this sentiment for a second.

"It's going to be fine, Turbo, really it is!" Felix clasped his hands on the table. "And you know that we're doing everything we can to help you. We all know how much you want to race again, so we're trying to get you there. We want you to be happy…"

Turbo continued to stare down at the table. "Well, I'm not happy, okay? And it's not your fault. I just…I don't belong here, and we all know it." His hands twisted into fists. "I'm a useless glitch, I can't race, I can't even drive, and I'm being treated like a criminal! Not by you, Felix, but by _some_ people." He directed a quick glare towards Ralph.

The enormous wrecker huffed. "Look, kid, that's pretty tough talk for someone who doesn't even understand half of what's going on – "

"Ralph, don't!" hissed Felix, his face tight.

"No, he's right. I don't understand." Turbo scowled, and another brief glitch flickered through him. "I don't understand why you even bothered to help me when you clearly don't want me here! I'm not stupid, I can tell that I'm not welcome. So I don't know why you did this at all!" He narrowed his eyes challengingly.

"Because leaving someone to die when you have the means and ability to help them isn't just apathy, it's cruelty!" responded Felix sincerely. "I've been around for thirty years, and I've seen what happens to people when they lose their games. Heck, it almost happened to my game not that long ago! But I got another chance, and I was so thankful for it that now I guess I've taken it upon myself to help out other homeless characters who need it. So when we found you, Turbo, it just seemed…well…like the right thing to do." He glanced over at Ralph and Calhoun. "Isn't that right, Ralph, Tammy?"

Calhoun hesitated, then dipped her head in an affirmative nod. "Part of the code of honor is to never leave a man behind if you can help it," she stated gruffly, but Turbo detected some reluctance in her words.

Ralph didn't say anything.

"I'm done eating," Turbo muttered, pushing away his plate. His chair scraped against the hard candy-tiled floor as he hurried out, shutting the door behind him. But he lingered by the entrance to the dining room, somehow anticipating that the conversation would continue as soon as he was out of the room.

His intuition proved to be correct.

" _This is why I can't stand teenagers_ ," complained Ralph, once he believed Turbo to be out of earshot. " _I mean, look at him! Look at how he's acting! He's the exact same hotshot that he was before, only now even more whiney because he can't race yet!_ "

" _Oh, give him a break, Ralph_ ," pleaded Felix. " _He's going through some confusing times right now. Waking up one day with a glitch, finding out that your game was unplugged, not being able to remember the past thirty years…it must be a lot to cope with."_

" _Oh, please,"_ Ralph scoffed. _"He's just looking for attention. I can remember that much about him: he was never happy unless all eyes were on him, and if throwing a tantrum was the easiest way to be the star of the show, he'd do it."_

Vanellope piped up, " _He's not…that bad. At least he isn't crazy now…_ "

" _Or at least, that's what it looks like so far. Just keep your guard up, Vanellope. Don't get too comfy around him, no matter how sane he seems."_

" _He's not in any danger of reverting!"_ protested Felix, exasperation entering the patient handyman's voice for the first time. " _And he'll be in even less danger once he feels happy here. We just need to give him some time…it's only been a few days, after all. And as for you, Ralph,_ " he continued, his voice becoming stern, " _you need to be more careful about what you say around him. I think he already suspects that there's something he doesn't know, and…"_

" _And he can't ever know!"_ Calhoun finished for him. " _Not unless we want a disaster like last time on our hands."_

Turbo's brow had crinkled low over his eyes, and he pressed himself against the wall, breathing deeply. Where did these conversational fragments fit in with the things he had already heard; how did they develop the half-formed suspicions already lurking in the back of his mind? He felt as if the more he learned, the more he became aware of how much he didn't know. But one thing stood out to him even more than the comments about his sanity and "a disaster like last time."

Felix hadn't said "not being _around_ for thirty years." He'd said "not being able to _remember_."

Turbo glitched, and he was so absorbed in his thoughts that he hardly noticed the ripple of pixels. "What's going on here?" he asked the open air, his voice a dark little whisper. "What are you all hiding from me?"


	7. Touchy

_Touchy_

* * *

Turbo's dream that night started out so innocently, which made it all the more terrifying when things began to twist and darken.

 _He was walking down a long, straight corridor in the castle, not the one that he always took to get to and from his room, but a different one with lavishly patterned wallpaper and a carpet so plush that he sank into it nearly past his ankles. Everything was as quiet and empty as ever, but in a peaceful, dignified way, as if this place were inhabited by a hugely important presence who would surely return soon. For a while, it was pleasant enough just to keep walking, enjoying the fact that in his dream world, he could at least be free of his glitch._

 _The only odd thing was the pictures._

 _The walls were covered with them: portraits, some paintings and some photographs, in various shapes and sizes, but all depicting the same character. Turbo's eyes flitted curiously over the multitudes of just one face. The subject of the portraits was a portly old man – a king, judging from the crown on his head – with a kindly face, rosy cheeks, and a nose as red and round and plump as a tomato._

 _Turbo began to feel uneasy, troubled by the sensation that every flat face's eyes were somehow watching him. Also, why would there be a corridor in Sugar Rush filled with pictures of royalty who didn't exist? The explanation that he was dreaming didn't occur to him; instead, he became convinced that he'd stumbled upon a part of the mystery that the others were keeping from him._

 _Suddenly, the corridor ended, not in a turn or a door or a set of stairs, but in a flat wall that forced him to stop up short. The wall was adorned with a gilded frame that was as tall as he was. At first he thought that it was empty, but then he realized that it was actually a mirror, reflecting the world back at him. When he approached it, his own face appeared, as ghostly-white as ever._

 _He frowned, gently laying his fingers against the cool silver surface of the mirror. Who'd commission dozens of portraits of themselves, and then stick a mirror in the place of honor? Well, whatever. There didn't seem to be anything important down here after all. He glanced over his shoulder, searching for an exit._

" _I know what you're looking for," said a voice._

 _Turbo whirled back towards the mirror, and now it wasn't a mirror, but a window looking out into an identical corridor. At least, that was what he thought it must have been, because someone was standing where his reflection had previously been, exactly at eye level. The king._

 _Turbo frowned. "I just want to get out of here…"_

" _Leave? But you've only just come back!" proclaimed the king, smiling sweetly. He had a singsong voice that lisped heavily on each sibilant. "This is a golden opportunity for you, Turbo!"_

" _An opportunity to do_ what _?"_

 _The king moved his hand over his heart, as if shocked. "Oh, no. It seems that you don't remember…"_

" _What?" asked Turbo. "What is it that I'm supposed to remember?"_

 _The smile turned into a grin. And the now the king was turning into –_

 _Turbo gasped and recoiled._

 _The king was fading, contorting, melting into what was unmistakably a twisted parody of the young racer in front of him. Even though Turbo (being the ghost boy that he was) disliked looking at himself in mirrors, he had never before been so terrified an image of himself. This other version of him shared all his basic features – the white skin, the yellow eyes set in dark hollows, the toothy yellow grin, the bleached racing jumpsuit and helmet – and yet it was so contorted, so monstrous, that he refused to believe that it was really him._

 _He tried to look away, but now every portrait in the hall had changed as well, taunting him with this thing that was him and wasn't him. Then his gaze was ripped back to the mirror as the figure inside reached right through the glass, gripping his shoulders and leering with its huge stretched mouth_

 _"Do you remember now, Turbo?" it asked. Its voice was the same as the king's, which shouldn't have been threatening but somehow was._

 _He couldn't make a sound. He felt invisible hands all over him, pressing him into place, binding his throat. Somehow he was convinced that the paintings had all come alive and were holding him there._

" _You don't remember? Well, you will." The thing started to cackle. "You will, and very soon!"_

 _And Turbo's entire body exploded into static – not just in a normal glitchy way, but in an excruciatingly painful way that felt as if something was trying to detach itself from underneath the pores of his skin. He screamed –_

"Pajama Boy!"

Turbo shouted once more at the significantly less threatening voice of Vanellope, before the room snapped back into focus around him. He was in his own bedroom in the Sugar Rush castle, sitting up in bed, and glitching all over. His pulse beat away in his throat, informing him that yes, he had screamed in real life. He exhaled in a shaky little huff.

Vanellope was seated at the edge of his bed, her button nose scrunched up in an irritatingly cute manner. "What happened?" she demanded. "You were thrashing and screeching, and – "

"What are you doing in my room?" he interrupted. He tried to glare at her, but found that he was still too exhausted and shaken from his nightmare to manage it.

She crossed her arms. "I was up for a glass of water and I heard you in here, making a lot of noise. At first I thought that you weren't even asleep. Did you know that you talk in your sleep?"

Turbo just gave her a deadpan look.

"Well, anyway, I peeked in, and you were just saying, 'No, no, no, no' over and over. Then you screamed. And then you woke up. And now here I am!" She tilted her head curiously. "What were you dreaming about?"

He blinked, his sleep-fuzzed mind still slow on the uptake. "Walking," he answered slowly. "I was just…walking through the castle."

"Racing? Really?" she scoffed. "Cause it sounded like a nightmare to me."

"It was." The events of the dream were fading away from him, and he grasped at the last dregs of memory, fruitlessly attempting to piece something cohesive together. "I think I was…I don't know, being attacked, maybe? And there was somebody else there? I can't quite remember…"

"Can't remember, or don't want to talk about it?"

"Mmf…" As the last remnants of his adrenaline rush drained away, his mouth stretched open in a yawn, and he fell back against the marshmallow pillow. "Can't remember. Doesn't matter, anyway. Now if you'll excuse me, glitter-graphics, it's the middle of the night and I'd like to go back to sleep."

"Same here. Nighty-night, Pajama Boy." Vanellope wriggled off of his bed, and her long nightgown went _whssk-whssk_ against the floor as she tiptoed out. As soon as he heard the door click shut, Turbo rolled over and closed his eyes, want of sleep immediately overpowering the fragmented recollections of his nightmare.

But just before he dropped into slumber again, he could have sworn that he heard someone laugh ever so quietly, close enough that they might have been right next to his ear. It was a jolly chuckle, but if he had been more alert, he knew that it would have sent a shivering glitch down his body.

" _Hoo-hoo-hoo…"_

* * *

Every single Sunday, Litwak's Arcade was closed in order to give its owner and namesake a weekend break. The extended time off had always been a perk for the game characters, who used the opportunity to get together, relax, party, and generally goof off and hobnob. It was Turbo's first Sunday in the arcade since his reawakening, and he was pleased to see that this sacred ritual still stood. Instead of being stuck in his bedroom while the others got to participate in the gaming, everyone was free for the day. And Vanellope's big plan for this afternoon was to take him on a grand tour of Sugar Rush.

"C'mon, Pajama Boy!" she exclaimed, bouncing as she dragged him through the halls by the sleeve of his jumpsuit. "Hop to it! Move your molasses! The arcade's not gonna stay closed forever, you know!"

"We've got plenty of time!" he protested, stumbling along behind her. He wasn't exactly slow, but between her nine-year-old hyper-ness and her speed glitching, he found that he always had a hard time trying to keep pace with her.

Ralph and Felix were standing around in the throne room by the time the young duo arrived. Vanellope scampered up to her two caretakers eagerly, while Turbo leaned against the doorway, thankful for the opportunity to catch his breath. "We're going out now!" declared Vanellope, hopping from one foot to the other. "We're going out to see Sugar Rush like you said we could. We can still do it, right?"

Ralph reached up a massive hand to rub the back of his neck. "Wait, right now? Uh…sorry, kid, but there's a Bad Anon meeting today, and I was kind of hoping that I could stop by…"

Vanellope's face puckered up in disappointment and irritation, but before she could deflate completely, Felix stepped in to save the discussion. "But that doesn't mean you can't go, Vanellope! Ralph, you go on ahead to your Bad Anon meeting. I'm sure that Turbo and Vanellope can handle themselves just fine."

The wrecker faltered, his agape mouth showing off the gap between his front teeth. "…you're going to let them go alone?!" His eyebrows pulled taut. "Felix, I don't care what you say, I am not letting Vanellope go off by herself with… _him_!"

At this point, Turbo stomped over to them, fizzing from an indignant glitch. He'd just about had it with Ralph's bad attitude towards him, and for once, he wasn't going to clam up and pout while even more restrictions were placed upon him. "What the what do you think I'm gonna do that's so bad, Mister Wreck-It?" he demanded, drawing himself up to the apex of his pitiful height.

Ralph's eyes widened, and his fingers twitched as if he was planning to snatch up the estranged racer for this perceived challenge to his authority, until Felix intervened once again. He placed a calming hand on his friend's elbow. "He has a point, Ralph. Turbo hasn't done anything wrong…I think we can trust him enough to go out for just a couple of hours, can't we? He's been very well-behaved, so what reason do we have to say no?"

"What _reason_?" Ralph breathed out, eyes still narrowed and glinting dangerously.

Turbo perked up, wobbling on his tiptoes as he anticipated that he might finally be about to hear something to give him a revelation. _Come on, just say a little more! Tell me the reason! Tell me why you've been treating me so poorly ever since I first got here!_

"Ralph!" pleaded Felix, his gloved fingers digging into the larger man's beefy arm. If Ralph decided to pitch a fit, then in all likelihood Felix wouldn't be able to do anything except repair the damage afterwards, but something about the desperate tone of his voice gave all four of them pause. Ralph's shoulders slumped, and he wiped the look of incomprehensible rage from his eyes, replacing it with an ordinary distrusting scowl.

"Fine then!" he growled. "I'm going to my meeting. But if these two aren't home by the time I get back, then we're sending Winchell and Duncan after them!"

Vanellope made a face that clearly conveyed her level of confidence in the two donut policemen.

Felix waited until Ralph had made his hasty departure before placing a hand on Turbo's shoulder comfortingly. Turbo, taken aback by the gesture, gave an involuntary glitch. "I'm sorry about all of this," sighed Felix. "Ralph is just…he's very protective of Vanellope. He doesn't like the idea of something happening to her while he's not around…"

"I can take care of myself!" protested Vanellope, her lower lip jutting out.

"And I wouldn't let anything happen, anyway," added Turbo. "Honestly, guys, what's the big deal about me being out on my own? It's not like I didn't spend six years without any adult supervision in Turbo Time…"

Vanellope giggled from behind her hand.

"Oh, what's so funny, glitter-graphics?"

"'It'sth not like I didn't sthpend sthix yearsth without adult sthupervision…'" she mimicked. "You talk funny, Turbo. I don't notice it all the time, but sometimes, it _really_ shows."

Turbo frowned. "I do not lisp like that!"

"You have a little bit of a lisp, Turbo," placated Felix, his voice remaining even and soothing. "Not a very pronounced one, but it's there. And it's nothing to be ashamed about – "

"Yeah, you're just ever stho sthlightly listhpy!" Vanellope was overtaken by delighted cackles, and she slapped her knee at the hilarity of her own joke.

Turbo rolled his eyes, hardly noticing as he glitched again. This was why he had such a difficult time trying to figure out the sugar-brat; every time she displayed some hint of genuine kindness towards him, no matter how large or how small, she always negated it with something like this. And…there were still those intermittent moments where he caught her staring at him like she was seeing someone else entirely. It was becoming a less frequent phenomenon now, but every so often, he still noticed it happening.

"Vanellope, it's not nice to make fun of other peoples' speech impediments," Felix scolded lightly, before a discomfited flush sprang to his cheeks. "N-not that you have a speech impediment, Turbo! All I meant was…"

"We know what you meant," Vanellope snickered. Her hand closed around Turbo's sleeve. "Come on, Pajama Boy, let's go!"

"Don't go too far!" Felix called after them as she scampered out the door, with Turbo once again stumbling along in her grasp. "And be home in time for dinner!"

Vanellope immediately made a beeline for the side of her road, where her kart was parked and perched on its wheels as if in anticipation. "I assume that you're going to be my chauffer again?" quipped Turbo, who was still (much to his chagrin) unable to drive safely.

"You _asthume_ right," she responded cheekily, and he crossed his arms at this repeated exaggeration of his slight lisp. "Oh, not funny anymore, huh?"

He plopped himself down on the back of her car. "Let's just get on with the tour, okay?"

The engine began to grumble and vibrate a moment later, but she didn't put her foot on the gas pedal just yet. Instead, she leaned over the back of her seat to gaze at him meaningfully. "You're pretty touchy, you know that?"

"I'm not touchy!" Turbo crossed his arms tightly over his chest. "I just don't like it when people make fun of me!"

"It's only joking around, Turbo."

"Easy for you to say. How would you like it if people were always calling you a freak or a stupid kid or a ghost boy – " He cut himself off, realizing that he was becoming far too personal.

Vanellope tilted her head. "Ghost…boy?" she inquired curiously.

He released a huffy breath. "Yeah. That's the name that people used to tease me with. You know, because I look like…" He gestured to himself.

"Huh." She blinked at him sedately. "Well, I can safely say that I've never heard that one before." With that, she shifted her kart into gear and pulled onto the road, this time bypassing the street that led to Sweet Ride. As a matter of fact, she made hardly any turns as the minutes passed, only following the gradual curves of the main road. He had expected a scenic route with a lot of looping and backtracking, but even without that, he was still farther into Sugar Rush now than he had ever been before.

"Where are we going?" he asked. "I mean, you're driving like you've got somewhere specific in mind."

"I do! We're going to the best place to get a view of the game." As she spoke, they passed beneath a sign bearing an inscription, in a curling and embellished font: _Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow – Come Back Soon!_

Turbo glanced down and saw that the road beneath them had apparently turned into a crystallized rainbow, which arched up towards the mountains towering over the horizon and vanished into a dark circular hole. It took him a moment before he figured out what he was looking at. "Are we leaving the game or something?"

"No, we're not allowed to. That is, _I'm_ allowed to, but I'm not s'posed to leave you alone." As they continued up the incline, he found himself leaning forward to clutch the back of her chair with all his might, but Vanellope was unperturbed. At last, they rolled to a halt just in front of the cavernous exit towards Game Central Station. "Just look."

He lowered his dangling feet to the ground, took a step forward, and stared.

She hadn't been kidding about the view. From their current vantage point, the entire game map was visible, and the candy-coated features came together in a magnificent construct of design work. The castle that he had been cooped up in was a swirling confection from a children's fairy tale now, not just a gilded cage, and Diet Cola Mountain punctuated the skyline like a giant raised index finger, scudded cotton candy clouds swirling around its peak. Best of all, racetracks of every kind were laced together throughout the land, crossing earth and sea and sky, entwined with lacy precision like a doily. He could see the multicolored sprinkles that must have been the other racers as they darted back and forth, competing in the daily noncompetitive races, and every so often the spectators would send up a muffled cheer. Far in the distance, a factory of some sort released multicolored plumes from its smoke stacks. And it seemed that every patch of empty space was taken up by a milk chocolate pond or a grove of candy cane trees.

Vanellope appeared at his side in a blue crackle. "Isn't it awesome?" she asked with a smile. "Sometimes I'll just come up here, not to go out to Game Central, I mean, but just to look. It's a good place to sit and think. Plus, I can survey my kingdom, being the president and all!" She spread out her arms proudly.

Turbo glanced down at her. "Um, I'm pretty sure that presidents don't have kingdoms."

"Fine, whatever. It's my president…dom." Her tongue, which was blotted with multicolored candy stains, poked out at him. "It's mine, anyway."

"It's nice," he admitted, walking around the top of the rainbow bridge nonchalantly. All of a sudden, he was painfully conscious of the exit behind him. Sugar Rush _was_ nice and all, but could he help it if he had a little cabin fever after being stuck here for so long? Anyway, he wasn't planning to go anywhere. He was just going to take a little peek down the tunnel…

His feet and his brain inched him closer, despite the fact that a sensation in his gut informed him that even peeking probably wasn't the best thing to do right now. Even so, his neck was stretching out now, and just as the very tip of his nose was about to pass from the boundaries of the game –

"Gah!" He cried out and stumbled back as a blue force field suddenly exploded in front of his face, rippling across the entryway as if a stone had been tossed into a puddle of pure energy. Blinking in shock, he reached up a hand incredulously, rubbing the spot where his nose had made contact. Vanellope spun around to face him immediately, her eyebrows ruffling.

"Pajama Boy, what are you doing over there?" she demanded.

"I was just looking!" protested Turbo. "And all of a sudden, something…" He extended his arm experimentally, moving slowly this time. Just as his hand was about to reach into the tunnel, his palm connected with what felt like a solid surface, and more azure distortions flickered across the surface of the invisible barrier. "…what _is_ this?"

Her eyes had now become round with surprise and understanding. "Oh," she murmured.

"Oh _what_?" Just then, he glitched, and the force field delivered an electric shock through his pixilated hand and into the rest of his body. He hopped back with a short yelp of pain.

"Come on, Turbo, get away from there." She closed her fingers around his sleeve. "You'll just hurt yourself."

"What was that?!" he pressed. "It's like I can't leave the game or somethi – " He cut himself off as comprehension slammed into him like a bludgeon to the head.

It had been like he couldn't leave the game, because that was exactly what it was. Turbo was a glitch now. And glitches couldn't leave their games.

"Oh," he said, his voice dropping down to the same resigned whisper that hers had been a moment ago. " _Oh_."

She bit her lip. "Yeah. I probably should have warned you, but I mean, we weren't sure if…well, nothing we can do about it now."

Wordlessly, Turbo lowered himself down so that he was seated on the edge of the rainbow bridge, his legs dangling over the scenery below. It had been awful enough when his glitch prevented him from fulfilling his purpose, but now this as well… "It's okay," he sighed. "I didn't really want to go out there, anyway. I wouldn't recognize anything."

Vanellope nodded, a bit too over-eagerly. "Yeah! We've got plenty to explore here, and you don't even really need to go outside! Plus, this works out kind of good, because if anybody saw you out there, they would…" She trailed off, biting down on her tongue a little too late.

Turbo angled his head towards her curiously. "…they would what?"

"…they would…uh…be really freaked out because they thought you were dead for a really long time," she answered hurriedly.

"I guess so." He shrugged noncommittally. "Nobody ever liked me in the first place, so it doesn't really matter."

Her face became thoughtful at that, but after a brief pause, all she said was, "Come on, let's finish the tour."

Mixed emotions coursed through him as he clambered atop her kart again. A numbness settled in the pit of his stomach; it was as if he, unsure of what to feel, had automatically shifted into feeling nothing at all. Still, he didn't regret coming up here. He would have had to figure out that he was barred from exiting the game sooner or later, and besides, the view from the top of the rainbow bridge really was lovely.

And for once, as Vanellope drove off again, he didn't even glitch.

* * *

They traveled the winding pathways of the game, and Vanellope pointed out the locations of notable landmarks, areas like Sugar Square and the kart bakery (the factory that he had glimpsed earlier) and a few of the themed racetracks as they passed. One thing that she was careful to avoid, however, was any other racers or citizens who might see them. With all that he had heard and deduced so far, Turbo was seriously beginning to doubt that he was only being kept a secret because of his creepy looks and sudden reappearance.

On their way back to the castle, the very thing that he had been fearing since he'd started bumming rides on the Vanellope's car finally happened: she hit a bump in the road at high speed, and when his frantically scrabbling fingers failed to find purchase, he went toppling off and tumbling towards the side of the road. Fortunately, they happened to be in an area where whipped cream was especially abundant, so he had a soft landing. Unfortunately, Turbo had never actually wanted the experience of becoming submerged in whipped cream.

"Oh, Turbo, are you okay?!" exclaimed Vanellope as she bolted towards him, speed-glitching to push herself along. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to do that…" As soon as she got a look of him, pretty much a pile of white with red sneakers at the bottom and two glowering yellow eyes peering out, she doubled over laughing.

"Thanks so much, glitter-graphics," he groaned as he did his best to scrape the whipped cream away from his face. Cautiously, he licked his fingertip, and sweet fluffiness danced across his taste buds. Well, he supposed that there were worse substances to be covered in.

"Hey, look on the bright side." She grinned at him. "At least it's white. It won't stain those pajamas of yours, since nobody will be able to tell the difference!"

She was interrupted when Turbo swung his arm hard enough to land a well-aimed glob of cream directly on her nose. Her hazel eyes widened, and for a moment, he wondered if he had gone too far, if his retaliation had angered her. Then…

"You are so gonna get it now!" she squealed gleefully, diving into the pile and grabbing fistfuls of whipped cream to hurl at him like snowballs.

Thirty minutes later, they would finally return home after a lengthy cream fight. They would be slightly late for dinner, true, and Felix would be especially cross when they had to explain why they were both coated in gloppy white deliciousness, but Turbo didn't care. It was the first time in he-couldn't-remember-how-long that he had actually had fun.


	8. Level up

_Level up_

* * *

The days zoomed by to the rhythm of the racecar engines always buzzing throughout Sugar Rush. Things were changing, albeit so slowly that Turbo hardly noticed at first. During gaming hours, he was still cooped up in the castle, with nothing to do except get stared at by Sour Bill and gaze with increasingly longing eyes at the other racers as they had fun far in the distance. It was Felix who finally attempted to remedy the situation of boredom.

"Turbo, it's not good for you to be sitting around all day doing nothing," the handyman remarked early one morning. "Do you have any other, non-racing hobbies? Something that your glitch wouldn't interfere with?"

"Uh…" Turbo clasped his hands behind his back as slight, embarrassed glitches sparked in his limbs. "Well, there is one thing, but it's kind of weird…" He rocked on his feet uncomfortably.

Felix arched an eyebrow. "What is it?"

Turbo told him, and Felix smiled warmly upon hearing the request that followed. "Not a problem at all. I can fix it."

He went to work, and upon his return, he had procured four rolls of multicolored yarn and a slender metal implement, which was hooked at one end. Turbo thanked him for the materials and, still feeling slightly humiliated, set to work that same night. Predictably, when Vanellope skipped into his room the following afternoon to fetch him for glitch lessons, she nearly fell on the floor laughing when she saw what he was doing.

" _Knitting?_ Really, Pajama Boy?! You knit?!" She cackled like a maniac. "Just when I thought that you couldn't get any prissier!"

Turbo, who was sitting cross-legged on his bed with an amount of red yarn in his lap, frowned and lowered his needle. "I'm not prissy! And this isn't knitting, it's _crochet_!"

That only made her laugh harder, since apparently she couldn't see the difference.

He rolled his eyes and set his project, the beginnings of what would eventually become a scarf, to the side of his bed. "Go ahead, make fun of me all you want," he sighed, his voice warping slightly on the last word as he glitched briefly. "But it's not like I have anything else to do around here while you're out there racing!"

"How do you even know how to knit?" she asked, swiping away the moisture that had accumulated in her eyes during her giggling fit.

"It's kind of a long story." His gaze drifted up towards the ceiling. "See, this one year during Christmas, me and Jet and Set got started talking about Christmas sweaters. Don't ask, it's really hard to explain. Anyway, this led to us having a contest to see who could find the most ugliest sweater in the arcade, but I decided that instead of going on a scavenger hunt to get one, I was just gonna make one myself. So I did."

Vanellope batted her eyelashes at him. "And…was it really ugly?"

"It sure was. I won the contest with Jet and Set hands-down. But it was weird because after that, I figured out that I kind of liked crochet. It's all…I dunno, it was kind of relaxing. It still is." He swung his feet nonchalantly. "I glitch less when I'm doing it."

"Are you making another ugly sweater now?" She padded over to his bedside, but he stuffed his work in progress beneath the pillow before she could get her hands on it. "Aww, c'mon, let me see it!"

"It's a scarf, not a sweater. And it's not ugly," he corrected her defensively. "At least, I hope it won't be. I'm usually better with scarves than I am with bigger stuff – "

"And did you really teach yourself to knit?" she interrupted, hardly paying any mind to his answers. His hidden skill seemed to be nothing more than a running joke to her. "You just sat down one day and boom, you could do it?"

He shook his head. "I never said that I taught myself, glitter-graphics. Felix was the one who showed me the basics."

That snatched up her attention, and she plopped down on the bed next to him, arching one eyebrow dramatically. "Really? I thought you said that nobody in the arcade liked you," she challenged.

"Yeah, but…Felix likes everybody," admitted Turbo, and she flashed him a little grin of agreement. "Felix and I weren't exactly what you would call friends. We just happened to know each other in passing. I remember talking to him every now and again because he was actually nice to me. But, y'know, what else can you expect from a guy who lives in _Nice_ land?"

It had been a while since such menial recollections of his past had occurred to him, but those little tidbits of his history were surprisingly sharp in his mind; he remembered how he and Jet and Set had bargained each other into that ugly sweater contest, and the day that he had sat cross-legged on the floor in Felix's apartment, working with yarn and a crocheting needle for the first time. Felix had been standing over him, chuckling good-naturedly. _"I never thought that a kid like you would want to learn anything like this!"_ he had declared. Turbo's reply had been, predictably, _"I'm not a kid."_

Those were memories of events from over thirty years ago, and he could still call up the specific details in his brain. He'd always had a pretty good memory. Which made it all the more perplexing that there was a gap of three decades in his head that, try as he might, he found himself utterly unable to access…

Vanellope's lips parted as a questioning look assembled itself on her face…then she quickly glitched herself to a standing position and cleared her throat seriously. "Enough of your knitting for today, Pajama Boy. We've got some glitching to do."

"I know, I know." Turbo's snub nose crinkled up as he dragged himself to his feet reluctantly. He had nothing against Vanellope or the fact that she was attempting to help him, really and truly he didn't, but he all too often felt that he wasn't making any headway in his glitch training at all.

But he was.

His pixel problems were becoming more and more infrequent, now, until they pretty much only occurred during moments of high emotional tension. And when he did glitch, he hardly noticed it at all. He no longer felt as if he would shatter into a million pieces every time strands of scarlet binary flickered across his body. And that was why, by the end of his second week in Sugar Rush, Vanellope told him that he could get back behind the wheel of the generic borrowed kart.

And he drove it – at a slower speed than he would have preferred, admittedly, but he didn't crash.

As he was cruising along Sweet Ride in that car, the notion that he could become a true, successful racer in this game suddenly seemed real and tangible to him. He no longer had to grasp at an abstract notion, because his goal – the return to his purpose – was almost in sight. And perhaps it was the spark of optimism ignited in him by this realization that caused him to begin improving much more rapidly from that point onward.

Sure enough, a measly three days after he had really started driving again, Vanellope stopped up short halfway through their daily lesson and made a statement that was music to his ears: "Come on, Pajama Boy, let's race."

* * *

This would be Turbo's first race in, well, thirty years. He was grateful that he had only been awake and aware for a short period of time. He'd had a hard enough time going a couple of weeks without racing; three conscious decades would have been nothing but a period of long, drawn-out torture.

He scooted around in his seat as he waited at the starting line, the kart engine trilling gently beneath him. Though he'd been practicing with it for a while now, this vehicle still felt clunky and foreign, and he pined for his old Red Rocket. Still, beggars couldn't be choosers, so he didn't vocalize these complaints. At this point, he was so eager to start zooming down the track again that even a pedal-powered junk pile would have been all right with him.

Vanellope was in her car beside him, and she tapped the gas pedal without shifting into gear, producing an obnoxious revving noise to snatch his attention. "We'll go for two laps," she announced. "I'll play fair and I won't speed-glitch. If you feel like you're gonna crash, you know what to do."

He nodded, his yellow eyes owlish behind their protective goggles. In addition to learning glitch control, he had also been instructed in several methods of crash safety since his arrival in this game.

"Ready to race, buddy boy?"

"I was _born_ ready to race!" he responded, wrapping his fingers around the steering wheel.

"I'll bet." She grinned at him. "Okay then, on your mark…"

He transferred his foot to the brake pedal.

"Get set…"

He twisted the lollipop gearshift, holding the kart steady with the brake, sensing that it was ready to leap forward at the barest little push.

"GO!"

Turbo slammed his foot on the gas – there was no need to be delicate about it, really – and tore off down the road, a spray of cocoa dust billowing out from behind him. His senses were sharpening now, and his perception expanded to envelop as much of the course as he could see, ready to sound alarm bells at him at a moment's notice. _Don't think, just react. Just race. Let the programming take over…_

Here was the first major turn; he spun the wheel, expertly hugging the broad side of the curve. Unfortunately, he had taken it a bit too wide, and Vanellope zipped on by him. That was okay. Most of the time, what happened during the beginning of the race didn't really matter compared to what happened at the end.

Red pixels crackled up his spine like a chill on a breezy day, but he ignored the slight glitch and merely focused on driving. As long as his vision wasn't being obstructed and he still had control of his limbs, he was fine. He wasn't going to let his glitchy tendencies throw him off the road anymore.

A crystalline cube hovered in front of him, and he shifted into a higher gear as the front of his car connected with it, blinking as glitter fizzled into the air around him. Vanellope had told him what these things were, but he had never actually used one before. "POWER UP!" a voice shouted out of nowhere, and a button on his dashboard lit up with a small illustration of a cherry. _Cherry Bomb_.

"Okay, let's see what you can do," he muttered, his gaze flicking down for half a second as he pressed his thumb against the button.

An oversized cherry materialized out of nowhere on the track behind him and detonated with a sound like a balloon popping. It didn't exactly help him get in front of his competitor, but it was more than he'd ever had in Turbo Time, anyway. Besides, there were supposed to be many different kinds of power-ups that came from those sugar cubes, so he was sure to come across a useful one eventually.

Just ahead of him, he spotted a puddle of slick-looking green liquid. Now _this_ was something that he'd definitely seen before – it was the equivalent of the oil spills he'd had to navigate past in Turbo Time. He skirted around the edge of the puddle expertly, and the back of Vanellope's car came into view. He wasn't that far behind her, and as he came up to the starting line once again, he knew that he still had an entire lap to overtake her.

Excitement sparked inside of him, but unfortunately, it wasn't the only thing sparking. Glitch glitch. He set his teeth, eyes narrowing behind the goggles into an expression of utmost determination. His glitch was _not_ going to control him. He was going to race again, and he wasn't going to let something like a minor code malfunction ruin it for him!

Over the straights, around the turns, faster and faster and faster…Turbo was catching up to her now. He saw the little sugar-coated girl glancing in her rearview mirror repeatedly, taking note of how close he was getting. She beeped her horn at him playfully. In response, he nuzzled his front bumper against the back of her kart ever so gently, his gas pedal pressed nearly to the floor so that he could keep matching her speed.

They were neck-in-neck as they returned to the line of power-up blocks, and Turbo swerved to the side slightly in order to snag one. This time, the button on his dashboard showed an illuminated image of two little sugar cubes. He had just been awarded the game's namesake ability: Sugar Rush, and it was just what he needed. He slammed his finger on the button again, and was immediately propelled just in front of Vanellope by a hefty speed boost.

"Hey!" she squealed, leaning forward in her seat as he sped by.

Turbo was now grinning like an idiot, but he didn't care. He held himself in first position long enough to cross the finish line, and then he immediately pulled his car to the side of the road, leaping out with a fist held triumphantly in the air. "YES! Turbo-Tastic!"

Vanellope snickered as she rolled to a halt alongside him. "Nice job, Pajama Boy!" she praised. "And hey, you said the thing! I mean, I know that Turbo-Tastic is supposed to be like your catchphrase, but I don't think that I've ever actually heard you _say_ it since you've been here."

"That's because things haven't been so Turbo-Tastic for me." He bounced on his feet a bit, the delighted smile never wavering on his face. "But now they are! I'm finally racing again!"

"Yeah, you've passed Level One!" She extended her first towards him, and he gave her knuckles a friendly tap. "Now you can drive without your glitch messing you up. So it's time to level up! Starting tomorrow, we'll meet at the Cakeway, and you can work on not glitching at all while you're racing. And that means that we'll be racing a lot more often!"

"Turbo-Tastic!" he repeated enthusiastically, and she giggled.

They plopped down together on a couple of gumdrops to take a much-needed rest; Turbo had nearly forgotten how exhausting a good race could be. Vanellope seemed to be in a particularly cheery mood, and she was all smiles as she looked over at him. "You're doing good, Pajama Boy. Really, you are. All you hafta do is keep working on controlling that glitch, and you'll be ready for the roster in no time!"

"Thanks, glitter-graphics." He kicked his foot along the ground as something occurred to him. "Say…do you mind if I ask you kind of a weird question?"

"Go ahead."

"Before you were the president, was there somebody else in charge here? A king, maybe?"

As soon as the words had departed his mouth, he knew that something was wrong. Vanellope stiffened all over, and in her oversized eyes, he could see…something. He couldn't quite identify the emotion. "Why…" She swallowed, treading carefully as she tried to devise a good way of answering him. "Why would you even ask something like that?"

"Well, I've been having these funny dreams…"

The plague of nightmares had still been assailing Turbo, not every single night, but still too often for comfort. He had awakened screaming several more times since that first day that Vanellope had crept into his room. Sometimes the dark, twisted fantasies focused on Turbo Time being unplugged, and those at least made sense to him. But for some reason, he was also having recurring dreams about that jolly-looking old king, with the plump red nose and the crinkly red bowtie and purple tailcoats, who really did seem to belong to the Sugar Rush universe. So many of Turbo's nightmares had ended with this king warping into that grotesque parody of Turbo himself, leering, " _Remember, remember…you don't remember yet, Turbo…but you will…_ "

"I keep seeing a man who looks like a king," continued Turbo quietly, his eyes dropping to the fudgy ground in shame. "And he looks like he came from this game."

Vanellope shoved her hands into the pouch of her sweatshirt, but he still saw that she was trembling lightly. "There did used to be a king here," she admitted. "An evil king. But he's gone now…"

He leaned towards her, wrinkling his snub nose as he finally recognized her expression for what it was. "…you're afraid of him, aren't you?"

"No, I'm not!" she protested indignantly. "It's just that he's…well, he's the reason why I'm a glitch. See, he was going to be the ruler of the game until the programmers decided that they wanted a princess instead, so they made me. But he…got loose, and he ripped up my coding and locked up everybody's memories, and made himself the lead character. So everybody hated me and called me a glitch and I wasn't allowed to race, even though I really, really wanted to, and I didn't have any friends, and I had to live by myself in an old abandoned bonus level, and…" She inhaled sharply and shook her head, making a physical attempt to dispel the bad thoughts.

A pang of guilt stabbed Turbo in the stomach. Maybe he should never have brought it up, but he hadn't realized that she'd react this way… "I'm sorry, Vanellope. I…I didn't know," he said, biting his lip. He couldn't think of anything else to say.

Vanellope straightened up and flashed him a tense smile. "I-it's okay, Pajama Boy. There was no way you could have known." She tilted up her chin. "And besides, we don't have to worry about him anymore. King Candy is gone forever."

 _King Candy_ …

Turbo glitched involuntarily, and he could have sworn that he heard someone whisper in his ear briefly. " _Remember, remember…you're starting to remember…hoo-hoo-hoo…_ "

Blinking off the eerie auditory hallucination, he piped up with, "If it makes you feel any better, I know what it's like to be out on your own like that. I've never exactly been mister popularity."

"Yeah, you mentioned that before. But…I'm still not sure I get it." She shifted, crossing her legs beneath her and poking a hoodie string into her mouth. "Didn't Turbo Time used to be the most popular game in the arcade?"

"Oh, sure, the gamers really liked us a lot. But the other characters in the arcade…not so much." He folded his arms in his lap, watching the cotton candy clouds drift languidly in the sky overhead. " I guess Jet and Set had an okay time, but me…I dunno. Something was _off_ about me."

"You mean, with the way you look?"

"That was part of it, but it wasn't the main thing. It was like…I couldn't make myself understood, and I also couldn't understand anybody. I _thought_ I could, but then I realized that the whole time I thought people were being nice to me, they were actually just mocking me. By the time I figured it out, it was too late, I would be known as the weird obnoxious kid forever." He snorted. "You know what's really pathetic? I _still_ can't figure out what I was doing wrong back then."

"Maybe you bragged a lot," suggested Vanellope.

"Maybe. I _did_ like to talk about all the races I won, but I wasn't _trying_ to brag, not at first. I was just excited. I guess I talked too much, but I couldn't tell if people wanted to hear it or not. I can't ever tell what anybody's thinking."

That intrigued her. "Really? So you can't tell what I'm thinking?"

"Not by looking at your face." He rolled his eyes in mock exasperation, then winked. "But you're pretty good about letting me know."

She snickered.

"Anyway, they were already making fun of me, but then new games started getting plugged in and I started looking real creepy. And you know how it is once people decide _one_ thing about you is weird – all of a sudden, everything you do is hilarious."

"You're tellin' me."

"They started calling me ghost boy, and that's when I decided that I couldn't ever be friends with anybody, so I stopped trying. I was kind of by myself after that." A sigh breezed through his lips, and he shut his eyes wistfully. "I think that's why I liked racing so much, or rather, liked winning so much. Not just because I was the lead character and I was supposed to want to race and win, but because when somebody was playing my game and they won…and I got to stand up on the podium holding my trophy while they high fived each other and talked about how great Turbo Time was…well, that's the only time that I ever felt like I was really _worth_ something."

Vanellope was tilting her head at him thoughtfully. "I think I know that feeling," she said. "And it's the best feeling in the world. But there are other ways to get it besides winning, Turbo."

"Oh, really? Like what?"

She slipped off of her gumdrop and approached him with an uncharacteristically serious expression on her face. "Like having a family. I haven't had a family for very long, but now that I do, I _always_ feel like I'm worth something. I don't have to win every race, I just have to know that they're there, watching me and supporting me…and loving me."

"Well, that's great for you, glitter-graphics." He averted his eyes. "But I don't have a family. Never have."

"Maybe not, but at least now, you've got a friend."

"Who?"

Pudgy little fingers entwined around his hand and squeezed. "Me, g- _doy_ ," she declared, and smiled.

* * *

Turbo contemplated that concept a lot during the evening. _Family_.

He thought about it after dinner, as he watched Ralph and Vanellope fooling around in the throne room. Ralph had scooped the girl into his massive hands and was now tossing her lightly into the air, his face becoming softer and kinder as he listened to her giggles and screeches. "Higher!" she yelled.

"Higher?" repeated Ralph, arching one bushy eyebrow. "Okay, how's this?" He threw her again, and her ponytail bounced high above her head.

She was screaming with laughter now. "Is that seriously the best you can do?! I thought you were supposed to be strong! Throw me _higher_!"

"Still not good enough for you, kid?! Okay, how's this?" This time she went soaring so high that the top of her head brushed against the ceiling.

Felix gaped at the scene with his hands clasped over his heart. "Oh my land! Ralph, please be careful!"

"Aw, we'll be fine, Felix," replied Ralph dismissively. "You know that I'd never let anything happen to her." As if to confirm his words, Vanellope dropped gently into his outstretched palms, still giggling hysterically.

"Even still…" Felix wiped some of the concern from his face as he turned to Turbo, who was looking on to the scene silently. "Er, Turbo, we're going to go to Tapper's for a little while tonight. I would invite you to come with us, but…"

"I know, I know," Turbo sighed. "Glitches can't leave their games. You don't have to remind me."

Vanellope teleported out of Ralph's hands and gazed up at the estranged racer, puckering her lips sympathetically. "Sorry about that, Pajama Boy. We'll bring you back a root beer if you want!"

"No thanks," he answered, shrugging apathetically. "I've never really liked root beer." Besides, what was another night of crocheting alone in his bedroom when that was pretty much how he spent every day?

But on this night, after Ralph and Felix and Calhoun and Vanellope had headed out, the atmosphere of the castle felt somehow more desolate than usual. It wasn't as if he was the only one home, of course. There were guards and servants scurrying about and doing their work more or less unseen, not to mention Sour Bill. But they might as well have been extra furniture for all they interacted with Turbo, and through the somber silence, one word looped endlessly in his head.

Family.

He had been envious of the fact that Vanellope had one pretty much from the very start, but it was stunning to know that it was a relatively recent development for her. She seemed so comfortable with Ralph, Felix, and Calhoun – how could anyone have guessed that she hadn't known them for her entire life? And she, too, had once been a kid out on her own… _wait, no,_ he reminded himself. _I'm not a kid_.

Hours later, just as he was about to consider getting ready for bed, the door to his room was thrown open without warning. Turbo glitched from the shock and got to his feet. "Glitter-graphics!" he exclaimed, setting his still-unfinished scarf aside. "You startled me."

"Sorry 'bout that. I have something for you." Vanellope zipped over to his bed in a fizz of azure pixels, flat holding a rectangular object out to him that was certainly not a root beer. "See, when we were at Tapper's, Sarge dropped her Cy-Bug tracker, and Tapper said it was at the Lost and Found, so I went to go pick it up. While I was there, I saw this picture shoved in the back of the closet."

Turbo lifted the picture from her hands, brow furrowed. When he saw what it was a picture of, he glitched so strongly that he nearly sent it fluttering to the floor.

The picture was a photograph of him, looking as creepy as ever, except that his customary lopsided grin and dark-rimmed eyes radiated such utter joy that made him wonder how he ever could have been so happy. But that wasn't all. He had been captured sitting between two blue-clad, brightly smiling figures of about his same stature: Jet and Set. The photographer had apparently caught them in the middle of laughing together, and they'd just barely lifted their eyes towards the camera, hardly aware that this moment was about to be preserved in grainy 1980's color…

"I remember this," Turbo breathed. "It was from the grand opening of Tapper's, when it first got plugged in. Tapper was taking pictures of everybody who came in…"

Vanellope nodded slowly. "He told me that. He said he keeps all those pictures in an album, but not this one because too many bad memories. I mean, um…you know, you're supposed to be dead and everything." Her pupils flitted back and forth nervously. "But he didn't want to just throw it out, so…"

Turbo might have taken more note of the slip-up had he not been so concentrated on the photo. He could just picture Jet and Set stepping off of the paper wearing their identical goofy smiles, patting him on the back and remarking, "Long time no see, buddy." It occurred to him that this was probably the last surviving likeness of them that he even owned, one of the only pieces of evidence that Turbo Time had ever existed…

"You miss them, don't you?" murmured Vanellope, staring up at him mournfully.

He nodded wordlessly. Yes, he missed Jet and Set so much that sometimes it was like a hollow ache at the base of his ribcage. He couldn't think of anything more to say. If he'd ever had something close to a family, then those two had been it, hands down. And how had he showed his appreciation towards them? By constantly acting like a jerk, taunting their losses, and snapping at them that nobody ever won anything by being nice.

Something warm and cuddly attached itself to his chest, and he looked down in surprise. Vanellope had wrapped her arms around him, the top of her head coming up to just below his chin. Her lips curled into a slight, well-intentioned smirk when she saw his aghast expression. "What's with the face, Pajama Boy? Haven't you ever gotten a hug before?"

"No," he said, eyes wide as he frantically tried to formulate the proper response to such a display of affection. Aside from friendly pats on the back from Jet and Set, he'd hardly even been touched before. Still, he had to admit that it was sort of nice…soothing, and comforting…"I never have."

"Oh. Well." She took a step back, smiling sheepishly, and not showing any inclination to tease him for his inexperience. "I guess there's a first time for everything."


	9. Living dreams and living nightmares

_Living dreams and living nightmares_

* * *

" _Kid, we need to talk."_

" _Okay, gimme one second…"_

" _No, not in one second. Now."_

"Mmm…" Turbo rubbed a hand across his eyes sleepily, his head a dead weight as it shifted against the pillow. He had unintentionally dozed off after a series of particularly terrifying dreams had deprived him of sleep the night before, and now was only able to open his eyes with great difficulty; afternoon naps were always the hardest to awaken from. He couldn't help but consider drifting off again, before he remembered the conversation taking place outside his bedroom door that had awakened him in the first place.

" _What's going on, Stinkbrain?"_

" _What are you doing this afternoon?"_

" _I'm going to the Cakeway with Turbo for glitch lessons, just like always. Why?"_

" _Because that's exactly what we need to talk about."_

He propped himself up on his elbows, the sponge cake mattress depressing beneath him. "Vanellope?" he mumbled, still half-asleep. It sounded as if she and Ralph were talking out in the corridor…and judging by Ralph's tone, the wrecker was far from happy.

" _Back when we first reset Turbo, we talked about this. Me and Felix and Calhoun told you that you had to be careful with him, remember?"_

" _Yeah, I remember."_

" _Uh, clearly you don't, because you have been getting way too comfortable with him lately. And I'm not gonna lie, kid, it's a little concerning."_

" _Oh, come on, Ralphie! Don't be such a worrywart! Me and Turbo just do our glitch training and then play around a little afterwards, what's so bad about that?"_

" _You're acting like you and him have been bestest friends forever, and to me, it's starting to look like you've completely forgotten what he did!"_

" _Um, no. No, I haven't."_ Judging by the sudden coldness of her voice, Vanellope's emotions seemed to have pivoted one hundred and eighty degrees, and Turbo could just picture the scowl that her lips would be puckering into. " _You know I could never forget about that."_

" _Then why have you been acting like everything is just peachy?!"_

" _Well…"_

Turbo, now sitting fully upright, frowned quietly to himself. It was true and Vanellope had been spending a lot more of their free time together lately. Their glitch lessons always dissolved into leisurely races sooner or later, and Vanellope had taken to playfully wrestling and roughhousing with him when they returned home each day, tackling him to the floor and giggling as she declared, "Now's your chance, Pajama Boy! Use your glitch, just like I taught you!" And sometimes the two of them would simply sit and relax with one another after a long day of work and play, glugging down glasses of milk and chattering happily about how much they loved racing, funny things that had happened to them in the past, the worst crashes they'd ever been involved in, and all kinds of other stuff. So yes, they'd been noticeably friendlier with one another lately…but was Ralph really saying that it was a _bad_ thing? It wasn't as if Vanellope never hung out with her other friends, and judging by the amount of time she spent on Ralph's shoulder, he was her transportation method of choice! So why…?

" _He's not bad, Ralphie, honestly he's not. He's a lot like I was! All he wants to do is get control of his glitch and be a real racer, and besides…in a weird way, he's actually kind of sweet."_

" _Sweet?!"_ The word reverberated incredulously, so thunderously loud that everyone in the castle must have heard it. " _Kid, have you lost your mind?!"_

" _No! Why don't you want to give him a chance?! I like him, Felix likes him, even Sarge isn't as mean to him as you are! And that's saying something for her!"_

" _How am I supposed to forget about what he – "_

" _Ladies, keep your voices down!"_ That sharp, militaristic bark belonged to Sergeant Calhoun, who interjected the argument out of nowhere. " _Honestly, do you have to discuss this right here?"_

Nothing else was said after that, but the thuds of heavy footsteps stomping down the hall informed Turbo that Ralph had stormed off. The racer remained perfectly still for a while, puzzled and blinking, still two-fifths asleep. It was several long moments before he began to wonder if he had dreamed what he'd overheard, or misinterpreted it due to his drowsy state.

The door to his bedroom creaked open, and a rosy-cheeked face ringed by candy-coated black bangs peered in at him somberly. "Heya, Pajama Boy," Vanellope greeted him. "Did you…did you hear any of that?"

"Hear what?" asked Turbo, hoping that a nervous glitch wouldn't reveal his little fib. "I was taking a nap. I just woke up."

"Oh. Well then!" She perked right up, unmistakable relief seeping through to her expression. "Sleepin' on the job? Shame on you!"

"I didn't sleep well last night, okay, glitter-graphics?" He swung his legs over the side of the bed and rolled his shoulders, which more or less evaporated the last of the fogginess in his brain.

"More nightmares, huh?"

"Yeah. How did you know?"

"I heard you scream again."

"Oh." Betrayed by his ever-restless mind for the umpteenth time…he winced, and scarlet binary crackled against his torso. Just another very minor glitch. "Sorry about that. I can't help it."

"I know you can't. Anyway, are you gonna get your butt up and come to glitch lessons with me, or are you just gonna sit there?"

He considered it. "Sit here," he answered, as about half of him strongly desired more time to puzzle over the harsh statements he'd overheard.

The other, more nervous half, however, was secretly relieved when Vanellope decided that he was joking and tugged him off of the bed with a bouncy little snicker. He was beginning to think that he shouldn't spend very much time wondering about what the others were hiding from him. He might not like what he discovered about them…or about himself.

* * *

Turbo could hardly believe that he had been in Sugar Rush for nearly an entire month already, and it was even more surprising that he had somehow managed to fall into a routine. He had to admit that it wasn't so bad, training to control his weakened code and fooling around with Vanellope. Oh, of course he was burdened by the ever-present elephant in the room of not being able to leave the game, and the twins' absence still felt like a gaping hole in the center of his life, but he was…content. He was getting closer to racing again, nobody was calling him a ghost boy, and he knew that there was at least one person in the world who actually cared about him.

Vanellope had been showing him some more advanced glitching techniques lately – namely, how to use the malfunction for short-term teleportation. It was actually quite difficult. Eventually, Turbo found that if he drew in a deep breath and concentrated with every fiber of his being, he could make himself glitch and reappear a few inches or feet away, but this ability had one troubling side effect. He could only do it three or four times in a row before it caused him to feel dizzy and sick. He had even fainted on more than one occasion when he'd "glitched himself out."

At first, Vanellope had thought that this was a temporary hindrance that would subside over time, but it had hardly gotten any better over the course of their lessons. It looked as if Turbo wouldn't ever be able to speed-glitch as freely as she did. Still, he at least had something to show for his efforts, and maybe it would even turn out to be a useful skill if he could ever get the hang of using it on the track.

"Come on, Pajama Boy, try again," coaxed Vanellope, who was standing on top of a large jawbreaker at the side of the Cakeway. "Glitch yourself right next to me. Just focus…and concentrate…and..."

Turbo squeezed his eyes shut, sucked in a lungful of air, and forced himself to dissolve into a flurry of crimson binary. A second later, his body reassembled at the base of the jawbreaker. He opened his eyes and glanced around, admittedly disappointed when he confirmed his new location. "I almost got it that time."

"One more time! You were so close!" she exclaimed. She was a fan of affectionate insults, but when it came to glitch training, she seemed to always feel the need to be strenuously encouraging.

"Okay, okay. I can do this." He shifted his feet and inhaled a few cleansing breaths, trying to get into a more free-flowing state of mind…become one with the code, as it were. "I'm in control…in control…one, two, three – "

He glitched but remained stationary, and dizzy spots blossomed in front of his eyes. Turbo reeled and lowered himself into a sitting position on the ground, willing the nausea in his abdomen to retreat. "Um, I think it's time for a little break now."

"Yeah, you don't wanna tire yourself out, Pajama Boy." Vanellope hopped down from her perch and settled down beside him. "Don't worry, you _are_ starting to get better. I can tell. You just need to start using that glitch control when you're racing, and maybe soon, you won't even glitch at all when you don't want to!"

Suddenly, she snapped her fingers.

"…what is it?" he inquired.

"I just had an idea!" she proclaimed. "If you're gonna be taking a break anyway, I wanna show you something. The place where I first learned to control my glitch!"

"What, you think it's got magic that's gonna rub off on me or somethin'?"

She rolled her eyes. "It will _inspire_ you. C'mon, let's go. We're not too far anyway!"

Turbo had expected her to hop into her kart, but instead, she bounded off into a thicket of lollipop scrubs. He had no choice but to follow her, carefully easing his way through the sticky branches while she glitched back and forth eagerly. After a walk of about five minutes, surely no more than ten, a shadow fell across them, and he realized that they'd come to Diet Cola Mountain.

Vanellope twirled around to face him, rubbing her hands together.

"What I'm gonna show you is a total secret, Pajama Boy. I've never shown it to anybody in my entire life! Ever! …well, except for Ralph."

Turbo craned his neck curiously to gaze at two giant sugar-free lollipops, arching and intersecting above his and Vanellope's heads. "What exactly is this place?"

"I told you, it's a secret! Now close your eyes."

He snorted in annoyance, but obliged.

"I'm gonna grab on to ya, okay?" A moment later, her fingers closed around the sleeve of his jumpsuit. "Now follow me. Just keeping walking forward…"

He stumbled along after her insistent tugging. Even though his eyes were scrunched shut, he was able to detect an abrupt change in the lighting when darkness seemingly enveloped him…which was odd, because there were no caves or crevices that he'd seen around Diet Cola Mountain, not even any foliage that really provided a lot of shade. However, he didn't actually start feeling alarmed until a thunderous boom echoed all around him.

His eyes flew open, glowing dim and yellow, although even that didn't help him see exactly where he was. "What was that?!"

"Chill out, headlights." Vanellope let go of him and placed her hands on her hips. "It was only the cola."

"…Cola?"

With an impish grin, she scampered forward, leaving Turbo to scramble after her with steps that were significantly less speedy and significantly more unsure.

Slowly, his surroundings seemed to solidify around him; he was in a cavern constructed of marbled fudge and peanut brittle, with a low ceiling and sloping walls. It felt cramped, even to someone with his tiny stature. However, as he walked onwards, the environment opened up around him quite rapidly to reveal a bubbling orange lake, with white candy formations dangling above it from a point so high up that it was invisible to him.

"Ta-da!" Vanellope spread her arms wide. "Welcome to the secret bonus level!"

He frowned. "…secret bonus level?"

"Well, okay, it's not really a bonus level, but it was gonna be! And it's definitely a secret! Only super extra-special cool people get to see it, so consider yourself lucky."

Turbo couldn't help but smile at that. He'd only known Vanellope for a month, and already it was hard to remember a time when they hadn't been on friendly terms.

His smile only lasted until a fragment of the white candy formations broke off and tumbled into the steaming liquid below. At the impact, a geyser spurted up, accompanied by a rather violent noise.

A fragment of…something…overtook Turbo's memory for half a second.

" _You fools! Why are you going into the li – oh…"_

When a splatter of cola splashed and sizzled on the ground near his feet, he was jolted back to reality.

"Those are Mentos," Vanellope was explaining. "They fall in the cola and make it a'splode. So you gotta watch out, 'cause that stuff is hot enough to burn your pajama brains!"

He was still too shaken to come up with a response to her playful insult. "…how do you know about this place?"

Vanellope blinked, but otherwise showed no sign that his question had fazed her. "I used to live here. It was the only place I could go to be safe, back when…you know…"

"…when you were an outcast?" he finished uncomfortably. "And King Candy was around?"

"Yeah."

Another Mentos hit the cola.

" _Ohh…ohhhh…no – yes – n-no –_ "

"Over there was where my bed used to be. I had a bunch of stuff. Like some candy wrappers for blankets. When I go to bed, I still like to bundle myself up like a little homeless lady. Oh, and I had a doll that I made of – 'Bo, are you listenin' to me?!"

Turbo glitched. "W-wha – oh, I'm sorry, Vanny. I just…zoned out for a sec."

She stared at him for a long moment, but there was more concern in her expression than annoyance…uncharacteristically so.

"Anyway, like I was sayin', I used to have all that stuff. But then the mountain blew its top, and when the game reset we all got our memories back, I guess it musta gotten wiped out – "

BOOM. Another eruption.

" _No – yes – NO, YES, NO – GO INTO THE LIIIIIIAAAAAAGH – !_ "

Turbo glitched again and reeled back as Vanellope snapped her fingers in his face.

"Helloooo! Earth to Turbo! What the heck is the matter with you!"

"I…" He breathed out. The hallucinated imagery had gone away now, but he could have sworn that a too-familiar voice barely brushed a whisper beside his ear…

 _Remember, remember, remember…_

"…can we go, please, Vanellope? I'm sorry. But this place really gives me the creeps."

* * *

The lemon-drop sunlight was harsh on his eyes when he first emerged from the darkness, but welcome nonetheless. Almost as soon as they left the mountain, tension leaked out of him and evaporated, until the strange experience of standing by the hot spring had left only faint traces in his memory like sugar dissolved in tea.

"Well, I guess that was a bust," admitted Vanellope. "But don't worry, I know something else we can do! Except we'll have to wait until tomorrow, it's almost dinnertime now…"

Turbo could see no difference in the position of the sun, but he supposed that once you'd lived here long enough, you developed an instinctive sense of what time of day it was. "Okay. So what'll we do tomorrow?"

She tapped a finger against her chin thoughtfully, then announced, "Here's the plan. Instead of me coming home to get you for glitch training like usual, you're gonna go with Ralph to the Random Roster Race, okay? Don't bring your car, just walk. It's not that far. You can watch me from behind the stands as long as you keep yourself outta sight, and when I'm finished, I'll have a special surprise for you! Got it?"

"What kind of surprise?" asked Turbo.

She rolled her eyes. "If I told you that, then it wouldn't be a surprise, g- _doy_. But that's for tomorrow. For now…" She grinned hugely. "Think fast, Pajama Boy!" With that, she pounced on him as gleefully as a kitten, tackling him to the ground.

"Oh no you don't!" He squirmed, thrashing around as he tried to buck her off, but her skillful teleportation kept her clinging to him. "I'm already dirty as it is!"

"It's okay, we can wash those pajamas!" Her hands plunged into his armpits, fingers wriggling rapidly.

"For the last time, they're not pajamas! This is my – " His yellow eyes went wide, and clamped his mouth shut to restrain the uncontrollable laughter welling up in his stomach, which worked for about three seconds. "BAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

How in the world had she known that he was ticklish?!

"Muahahahaha!" she cackled evilly, increasing the speed and ferocity of her tickling. "Let's answer an age old question! Do you glitch when you're tickled?!"

"Ye-he-he-HE-HES! I DO! I DO!" screamed Turbo, the only words he was able to get out before his voice was completely overwhelmed by laughter again, and sure enough, violent glitches were breaking out all along his body.

"Then I'll have to remember that for later!" She threw back her head and gave a triumphant guffaw. "Now I know your weakness!"

They were both absolutely filthy by the time they got home, but Felix was used to that by now.

* * *

It was only later, when he was lying awake in bed and staring up at the frosting-coated ceiling of his room, that Turbo recalled the unsettling argument between Ralph and Vanellope. And as if that had opened the floodgates, the memories of Diet Cola Mountain exploded to the forefront of his mind, along with all the strange images and sounds that had assailed him there. It was like…well, come to think of it, it was just like the voice that he'd half-heard whispering beside his ear before, sometimes during the day but most often when he was drifting off to sleep at night: _remember, remember, remember…_

What was he supposed to remember?

 _Well, that's a stupid question. The only thing I CAN'T remember is those thirty years between Turbo Time and now._

But he'd been catatonic during all that time, hadn't he?

 _That's what they told you. But what if they're lying?_

He swallowed hard, doubt settling over him like a layer of pond scum. These people were keeping something from him – Ralph, Sergeant Calhoun, Felix, and even Vanellope all knew something that he didn't, and they were trying to keep him from finding out. He had known it from the very start, and he'd never been more certain of it than he was now.

 _Something is very wrong here_.

He slipped out of bed and padded down the hallway, not even realizing what he was about to do until he had already knocked on the door to Felix's room, and by then it was too late to take it back.

"Oh, Turbo!" said the handyman in surprise upon answering the soft rapping. He was dressed in a pair of pale blue button-down pajamas with a monogrammed pocket, and the ever-present FF cap was missing from his head. Calhoun was visible just behind him, wearing gray sweatpants and a threadbare white T-shirt. "What are you doing up so late, kiddo? Is something wrong?"

Turbo fidgeted with his fingers, too preoccupied to recite his usual "I'm not a kid" mantra. "Felix, I wanted to ask you a question," he said softly.

"Oh? Ask away, then."

Turbo's tongue seemed to have frozen in place. _Go ahead,_ he prompted himself. _Start asking. There's so many questions that you could begin with. Like, why have you been hiding me away in the castle and not letting anyone else catch a glimpse of me?_

 _Why can't I remember the past thirty years of my life? Why is there such a sudden cutoff in my memories?_

 _How come I've been having nightmares about the evil king who used to rule Sugar Rush before I ever got here?_

 _What are you all hiding from me?_

But he couldn't do it. Trepidation was weighing heavily on his heart, and he realized that he wasn't willing to sacrifice the menial little bit of happiness that he did have in order to get at the truth. The truth wasn't necessarily going to make things any better or set his mind at ease. Maybe it was better to stay contented and ignorant.

 _If the nightmare died, the dream was dead, too._ Where had he heard that before?

So the only question to pass his lips was, "Why don't you like me?"

"What?!" Felix gaped, placing a hand over his chest. "Turbo, that's…is that really the impression you've been getting, that we don't like you?!"

Turbo lowered his eyes. "Well…I just feel like…"

"I know that we aren't around much on work days…and boy do I know that Ralph can be a little gruff sometimes…but we care about you!" Felix slipped his hand around Turbo's shoulder and squeezed reassuringly. "We all do. Listen, I know how hard it's been for you to make the transition into this game, and I know that you got frustrated at the start, but you pulled through it! And we're very proud of you. I don't want you to think otherwise."

Calhoun leaned against the doorway, her acute features softening a fraction. "You're kind of a strange kid, Turbo, but not a bad one. And you've done well since you've been here."

"I…I'm not a kid," Turbo mumbled self-consciously. His cheeks felt funny, and he was thankful that he wasn't able to visibly blush.

Felix chuckled. "Sure you're not. Go get some sleep, Turbo. Vanellope tells me that you've got a big day ahead of you tomorrow."

"O…okay." A brief glitch overtook Turbo as he turned around, and he glanced over his shoulder, feeling ashamed and frustrated with himself.

Felix smiled gently. "Good night. You're going to be a great racer, and we all know it."

"Thanks…night, Ms. Calhoun. Night, Felix…"

Turbo trudged back towards what was bound to be another night of troubled sleep, cursing himself for being such a coward, for allowing his moment of vulnerability to get to him. He was no weakling. He wasn't a wimp, he wasn't a coward, and most of all he wasn't a kid…but he wanted to be, and that was what stung him.

His desire to act his own age was stronger than anything, even outweighing his wish to race again. He wanted to be like Vanellope, to have a family who would look after him and care for him and never ever leave him, to be able to fool around and be immature without having to prove himself to anybody…and most of all, he wanted to be able to go home in the evenings and know that no matter how his day had been, no matter how bad or good things had gone, he was loved and always would be. No more paranoia, no more abandonment if the gamers began to turn him a blind eye. A home and a family, that was all he really wanted.

Maybe that was all he'd ever wanted, and he'd just been looking for attention to satisfy a need that he had never been able to identify. Maybe tomorrow, he would gather up the courage to ask Felix about what he didn't know. Maybe…maybe…


	10. Flip of a coin

_Flip of a coin_

* * *

 _He was racing, finally racing again, zooming through Sugar Rush on the most amazing course he'd ever seen. There were villages and canyons and even a giant birthday cake, and he was having so much fun that he found himself laughing aloud. How could he ever have doubted that he belonged here? This was so much better than Turbo Time._

 _Now he was in a mountain range made of ice cream, and there was Vanellope beside him, smirking as she zipped ahead. He had to catch up! Luckily, he'd been here for so long that he knew all the secrets, and he swerved onto a shortcut that conveniently appeared before him. There weren't any rails on this section of the track, but that was all right. His was far too skilled to take a nosedive off the edge, and even if the unthinkable happened, he couldn't die here. This was his game now._

 _Soon enough, the shortcut rejoined with the main track, but he landed badly and ended up colliding with Vanellope's kart. Why had he done something so stupid? Now she was angry, of course, he'd be angry too if someone had jumped on top of his vehicle like that, but somehow they were still moving, and he'd grabbed something and was hitting her windshield, hitting her, and why was he doing this, why was he trying to hurt her?! Her mouth was open, she was screaming something, then her car was sideways and he was forcing it forward to strike a pillar – no, Vanellope, I'm sorry, I don't know why I'm doing this, you've got to get away! Fortunately she did, glitching at the last moment, but he had no time to feel relieved because he still didn't understand and he couldn't stop and WHAT WAS THAT THING COMING TOWARDS HIM DOWN THE TUNNEL –_

"Kid, what are you screaming about?!"

Turbo shrieked again, terror tapering off into surprise, as his eyes finally began to observe the room around him again. He was glitching so badly that many parts of him had completely deliquesced into static and strings of 1s and 0s, and his hands were clamped over his head, as if blindly clawing at something inside. He exhaled shakily, flinching when his breath came out as a terrified half-sob, and lowered his arms. "O-oh…oh…"

Ralph was watching him with a quizzically arched eyebrow, leaning in the bedroom doorway…which, for the wrecker, meant that he had stuck his head and one beefy arm through the door. "Turbo, what's all the yelling about?" he repeated. Even his gruff face was a sight for Turbo's sore eyes right now.

"It was just a nightmare," Turbo gasped, saying it to himself as much as to Ralph. "J-just a stupid dream…oh…"

"…yeah, I figured that much." Ralph cleared his throat, still observing the racer uncertainly. "Do you always make so much noise when you have a nightmare?"

"I can't help it!" snapped Turbo, scowling. "It was…it was so awful! At first I was just racing, but then…!" He was losing the fervor that had made the dream so horrifying, and he frowned with an emotion that was almost confusion. After all, what was there to be afraid of? He was here in Sugar Rush, his new home. He could drive almost as well as before and was making good progress with controlling his glitch. He'd settled down for an afternoon nap not too long ago, though he'd almost been too excited to fall asleep, because…

Oh, right! The Random Roster Race – Vanellope's surprise! That must have been why Ralph was here. But Turbo could have sworn that when he dozed off, it hadn't been anywhere close to closing time.

"Take it easy, kid," said Ralph. The words weren't exactly dripping with love and comfort, but they weren't particularly cruel, either. "It wasn't real. It doesn't mean anything. Now get your behind out of bed and start getting ready, 'cause Vanellope will kill you if you're late to the Random Roster Race."

"That's right…" Turbo forced the last fragments of the dream out of his mind, focusing instead on Vanellope and their plans for the day ahead. He noticed that he was still fizzling with glitches, and silently chanting to himself that he was in control, he sucked in a few deep breaths and pushed the malfunctions into submission. Vanellope would never stop teasing me if she saw me like this, he thought.

Then he glanced up at Ralph again, brows quirking upwards in surprise. "Wait, I've been sleeping for almost three hours!"

"Well, that's not my fault, is it? I guess you really are a teenager."

* * *

Things actually did begin to look up that afternoon, starting with the Random Roster Race.

Turbo had never seen this event up-close before, and he had to admit that for a regular daily race, it was pretty spectacular. All fifteen Sugar Rush avatars, each themed after a different type of confection, rolled their karts up to the starting line of the Royal Raceway. Then they gathered around what appeared to be a tall popcorn box overlooking the track. His view wasn't entirely complete from where he was lurking behind the candy-box bleachers, but the important thing (or so Ralph had told him when the two of them had come down here) was that the jumbotrons were directly in his line of vision. If he could see the screens, then he'd be able to watch the race.

Vanellope stood at the top of the popcorn box, making announcements to the citizens of her game. Though she often referred to herself as the president, he'd never really given a second thought to that before, and he hadn't exactly considered her an authority figure – until now, when she seemed to slip effortlessly into the role of the spunky, competent leader of Sugar Rush. She spoke about various parties and public events that would be taking place over the next few days, and then explained the rules of entry to the Random Roster Race, including the gold coin system. "This event is pay-to-play!" she shouted.

We all know this, Turbo thought to himself, and then he frowned, his brow furrowed. How did he know that? He dismissed the eeriness that washed over him, sure that Vanellope must have just mentioned it to him at some point.

Remember, remember, whispered a persistent voice in his head, but the crowd was so rambunctious that he hardly heard it.

Next, the racers all lined up to toss their golden coins into the winner's cup, which was balanced atop the starting line. "VANELLOPE VON SCHWEETZ!" shouted the announcer, as the little girl's name and picture appeared at the top of the board. She was quickly followed by, "TAFFYTA MUTTONFUDGE! MINTY ZAKI! ADORABEEZLE WINTERPOP! SWIZZLE MALARKEY! RANCIS FLUGGERBUTTER!..."

He examined the racers curiously: there was a pink strawberry girl; another girl decked out in lime green; another bundled up in cutesy winter gear; a couple of boys who looked like a swizzle stick and a peanut butter cup, respectively. None of the avatars could have been much above nine years old. They preened themselves, waved to the crowds, suited up in their protective gear, and engaged in any other pre-race idiosyncratic rituals that they might have. Turbo contemplated how enjoyable it all seemed, and also how long-winded and overly complicated their names were. Gloyd Orangeboar, Crumbelina di Caramello, and even Vanellope von Schweetz were awfully complex for someone used to a roster consisting of "Jet, Set, and Turbo." The exception to these naming conventions was the last girl up on the board, Candlehead, whose name seemed ridiculously obvious by comparison.

Finally, the last of the enthusiastic children had hopped behind the wheels of their karts, and floating marshmallows – Turbo had to rub his eyes and squint in order to confirm that he was seeing things correctly, but yes, they were definitely floating marshmallows – swooped down with equipment clasped in their disembodied hands, preparing to begin the race.

"Is everybody ready?!" shrieked Vanellope gleefully from her kart, which was at the front and center position at the starting line.

The other racers brought their voices into a muddled chorus of, "Yes!"

"Are you sure you guys are ready?!"

"YES!" This time the response was made more deafening by the spectators joining in as well. Turbo even heard Ralph bellowing along from his spot in the "Assorted Fans" section.

"THEN LET THE RANDOM ROSTER RACE COMMENCE!"

3…2…1…the numbers materialized in the air and whooshed above the racers' heads. One of the flying marshmallows held up a green traffic light, and with that, the racers were off – with the exception of the girl in winter gear, who accidentally stalled her vehicle and ended up slightly behind the others as she finally began moving down the track. Within seconds, all sixteen of them had vanished from sight.

Turbo crept along the side of the bleachers carefully, certain that no one would notice him; the crowd was far too focused on the race, after all. His eyes darted back and forth between the two large jumbotron screens mounted above the course. One of them listed every single racer's name and ranking, constantly rearranging and self-updating as the positions changed, while the other switched back and forth between various scenes unfolding on the track. Currently Vanellope was visible on the live feed, weaving between opponents as she exited Sugar Square and flew off of a ramp that deposited her into Gumball Gorge.

That looks dangerous, he thought to himself, his gaze tracking the paths of the giant gumballs as they collided head-on with several racers, but kind of exciting, too. He wondered how soon he would be able to try it. So far the Royal Raceway was much more elaborate than Sweet Ride or the Cakeway had been, and certainly there was no point in even bothering to compare it to Turbo Time, but he was always willing to take a risk where racing was involved.

Vanellope was in third position by the time the avatars arrived at the next major section of the track, an enormous birthday cake. (Wait a minute – a town, a canyon, a birthday cake…isn't that like…? He snapped his attention back to the race before his thoughts could wander any further.) On the screen, she was visibly laughing and joking with the two girls closest to her. "No cherry bombs today, eh Candlehead?" she snickered, her voice sounding tinny and faraway through the jumbotron speakers.

Out of nowhere, another kid – this one was the peanut butter cup boy, Rancis Fluggerbutter – rammed into the side of Vanellope's kart. Without even flinching, she flickered into blue static and rematerialized an instant later, now in second position. The crowd let out a delighted cheer at their president's resourcefulness, and Turbo clapped right along with them. "You're good, glitter-graphics," he said aloud, his voice promptly swallowed by the roaring citizens. "You're really good. But watch your back, because soon you won't be the only glitch racing out there!"

The next location was the Ice Cream Mountain Range, where the road laced through mounds of frozen treats, signs were posted warning the drivers of hot fudge and sprinkle avalanches, and powdered sugar flurried down from the sky instead of snow. Turbo's arms tingled softly, not with a glitch, but with an actual chill. I knew that the next place would be an ice cream mountain. But why did I know that?

No time to think about it, because in another moment, the camera had switched to pursue the first place racer (Candlehead), and she had already entered a tunnel where the road glinted with sugar crystals, mottled with all the colors of the rainbow. The track dipped down at an almost completely vertical incline, and the children, not bothering to slow down, shrieked with a combination of joy and fright as if they were riding a roller coaster. Even watching it from a distance was giving Turbo an uneasy sensation of vertigo. He wasn't exactly afraid of heights, but he had to draw the line somewhere.

The race was now blurring into a frenzied rush of action as the children zoomed down the narrow road, past stalactites and other vaguely threatening rock formations, bumping and banging into one another all the way. Between the noise of their horns blaring and the crowd going absolutely bonkers, none of the snide quips that the racers tossed at each other were audible, but the spirit of friendly competition was alive and present nonetheless. As soon as they made it out of the caves, Turbo spotted them all speeding towards the finish line, raising clouds of cocoa dust. Every so often, there was a blazing blue flicker as Vanellope teleported here and there. The leaderboard was updating too frequently to keep up with.

And at last, they all sped past the finish line en masse, so forcefully that he could have sworn that he felt a gust of wind even from behind the stands.

The final rankings were: Candlehead in first, Adorabeezle Winterpop in second, Swizzle Malarkey in third, and Vanellope von Schweetz in fourth. Vanellope, seeming hardly bothered by her loss, congratulated each of the top nine racers for earning their spots on tomorrow's roster before handing the winner's cup to Candlehead. The green-haired little girl was overjoyed as she accepted the trophy, which was now filled to the brim with gleaming golden coins. "I was almost running out of tokens!" she squealed. "I can't remember the last time I got first place!"

Vanellope grinned and punched her on the shoulder playfully. "Well, hopefully that'll make you feel better when I whip-cream you tomorrow!" she cackled.

The little president blew kisses to her subjects only half-sarcastically, and she waved enthusiastically at Ralph, who flashed a thumbs-up from his place in the stands. Then a group of the other children, including bubbly hot-pink Taffyta (the strawberry girl) swarmed upon her like ants over a sugar cube. "Want to come to Tapper's with us, Vanellope?" asked Rancis Fluggerbutter.

"Yeah, we're having a victory celebration!" added Swizzle.

"No thanks, guys," Vanellope pardoned herself. "I mean, I'd like to, but I already made a promise to do something for somebody else today."

Taffyta smirked. "Oh, you're going off with your mysterious friend again? When do we get to meet him, anyway?"

"I already told ya, it's none of your beeswax! But yeah, it does have to do with him. Catch you guys later!" With that, she skipped off towards her kart.

Turbo, who had at this point hidden himself more thoroughly again, flapped his hand at her a little so that she would see where he was.

Moments later, Vanellope had screeched her car to a halt beside him, and she was out and babbling at full speed before he could even say hello. "Didja see me, Pajama Boy?! Didja see me out there?!" she gushed. "It was so cool! I was zooming down the track, vroom vroom vroom, nothing was stoppin' me! And then Rancis tried to push me off the road, did you see that?! But I glitched away! Ooh, and how about when Taffyta got that power-up cube? She almost hit me with a sweet seeker! Man, it was so great – "

"Great?" interrupted Turbo quizzically. "But…you didn't win."

"No, I didn't." She bobbed her shoulders noncommittally. "Who cares? Sometimes I win and sometimes I don't. Really, the important thing is to get in the top nine and be on the roster for the next day." She bounced on her feet. "And I did do that!"

"Yup, you did," he agreed. "And it sure looked like you were having fun out there."

"I was! Oh, it's always so much fun! I love racing!" She grinned, flipping her ponytail in his direction. "I bet you'll have the time of your life once you get out there."

He smiled, envisioning himself taking part in the chaos that he had just witnessed. Nothing like he was used to, but certainly something to look forward to. "Definitely."

"Anyway, enough talk! It's time for your surprise!" Vanellope leapt into the driver's seat of her kart and patted the space behind her. "C'mon, hop on!"

"Wait, we have to drive to the surprise?!" Turbo groaned and dragged a hand along his face, stretching out the white skin of his cheek. "Listen, glitter-graphics, I am so over this riding on the back of your car thing."

"Shut up and get on," she ordered cheerfully. "You'll understand when we get there."

Stifling an irritated glitch, he rolled his eyes and hoisted himself atop the perch that he hadn't used since gaining enough control to properly drive. "Okay, let's go. Hey, is Ralph going to wonder where we are?"

"Nope. He knows exactly where we're going." She shifted into gear, her fingers pattering excitedly against the lollipop joystick. "Hold on tight!"

* * *

They bumped along semi-familiar pathways, and after about ten minutes of driving, Turbo realized that they were headed in the direction of the factory always crouching low on the horizon. His theory was confirmed when they approached a small guard booth placed at the side of the road, with a candy cane barricade jutting from its side to block their progress; inside it was an old man with a woolen cap pulled over his head and a bushy white beard, who was snoozing away contentedly and taking no notice of their arrival. Small, puffy white Z's drifted above his head comically, popping like soap bubbles in a steady progression. He was the only other person that they had come across on their journey.

"Hey. HEY!" Vanellope shouted at him, cupping her hands around her mouth. "Hey, you! Beard Papa!"

The old man jerked awake, slapping his cheeks in an attempt to make himself more alert. "What?! Who goes there – oh, P-President von Schweetz!" he sputtered.

"What the heck do I pay you for?" she demanded irritably, drumming her fingers against her pretzel steering wheel in a telltale impatient manner.

"S-so sorry for the delay, Madame President!" He yanked on a lever within the booth, and the striped pole slid upwards to allow them passage. Turbo glanced over his shoulder as they picked up speed and noticed that the old man was staring at him uncomfortably.

Vanellope either didn't see this or was choosing not to acknowledge it, because she was humming contentedly as she drove down the trail towards the factory. She eventually parked in front of a large, sturdy door, adorned with a crown symbol – Turbo recognized the insignia from its various appearances around the castle, and also because it was engraved into every single golden racers' coin. As she clambered out of her car, she seemed to have lost all ability to hold herself still, and she skipped and pranced and even glitch-teleported herself all about as she excitedly explained the situation to him. "You're goin' up another level, Pajama Boy!" she announced. "Surprise – it's time to make you your very own kart!"

Turbo blinked, and a startled glitch rippled through him before he could even think to stop it. "I…I'm going to have my own car again? Really?!"

"Yes, really!" She grinned broadly, as if she was about to bestow upon him the key to the world…and he supposed that, in a way, she was.

He thought back on his generic kart, her pile of bakery scraps, and the various other themed vehicles that he had spotted at the racetrack earlier. "What kind of car do I get?"

"Whatever kind you want!" She was working on the door latches now, and after delivering a few swift yanks to the safety padlock, the entrance shrieked open with the grating sound of metal scraping against the ground. Behind it was a round room, draped with velvety red curtains, with a sequence of enormous gently glowing buttons set into the walls. Each one was emblazoned with a picture of a different type of racecar.

He was about to make his way into the room, but apparently he wasn't moving quickly enough for Vanellope, because she shoved him inside so forcefully that he was only able to keep his balance through sheer luck. "Pick one!" she commanded, opening her arms to gesture to the wide variety of karts available. "That one over there is mine." She proudly aimed her finger at an illustration of a vehicle that barely resembled her sloppy, icing-laden thing.

Turbo pressed his lips together in ponderance. "Ummm…hmm, let's see…" His yellow eyes, which pulsed with their own internal luminescence in the dim lighting of the selection room, swept back and forth thoughtfully. Suddenly, he caught sight of one with a sleek, narrow shape that reminded him of his car from Turbo Time – and even better, it was all red and white, apparently peppermint-themed. "How about this one?" He strode over, placed his palms against the button, and pressed down.

A panel in the wall slid upward, revealing a vast area behind it with an assembly line stretching out past his field of vision, and an announcer's voice boomed out of nowhere: "WELCOME TO THE BAKERY! LET'S BAKE A KART!"

"Minigame time!" sang out Vanellope, hopping like the sugar-fueled child that she was as her fingers sank into his arm. He found himself stumbling along behind her as she flounced towards the first station on the assembly line.

"YOU HAVE ONE MINUTE TO WIN IT! GO!"

Turbo frowned. "Wait, I have to make the car myself?! And – there's a time limit?!"

"Yeah, and the clock's already started!" she exclaimed. "Hurry up!"

"MIXING! PUT THE INGREDIENTS IN THE BOWL AND THROW AWAY THE TRASH!"

The sorting process actually wasn't too difficult. It was basically a tilting platform controlled by a steering wheel, and his reflexes were fairly acute, at least where steering wheels were concerned. Granted, he did slip up slightly and accidentally add a clock, a cardboard box, and a combination lock to his mixture, but everything else that ended up being spun into batter was definitely edible.

"Aww. I was never very good at that," pouted Vanellope.

He dashed to the next station. "C'mon, glitter-graphics, who's going slow now?! We've only got forty-five seconds left!"

"BAKING! PUMP UP THE HEAT AND KEEP THE PERFECT TEMPERATURE!"

This section involved a giant oven and a proportionally large tire pump, and it turned out to be much more problematic, since Turbo wasn't anywhere near tall enough to reach the handles. "I can't reach!" he cried, jumping up and down with his hands frantically wriggling in the air, but he didn't exactly have a platformer's hopping abilities.

"Here, let me help!" offered Vanellope, and she glitched herself atop his shoulders, where she struggled to press down on the pump. "Almost got it…almost…"

He was wobbling beneath her weight. "I can't hold you for much longer!"

"Oh, come on! I'm not that heavy!"

"You're not that much smaller than I am! I can't – "

Ding! The oven chirped at them, and Turbo's wobbly legs buckled. Fortunately, he barely even knocked his elbow in the fall, and Vanellope had teleported off of him before he hit the ground. They scrambled down the assembly line side-by-side.

"DECORATING!"

Turbo stationed himself at the blaster, standing on his tiptoes in order to get a good view of the glass tubes bolted to the wall. Frosting, sprinkles, cookie crumbs, and all manner of other garnishes extended in a line like a scrambled rainbow, and he immediately set about replicating the red-and-white theme that he'd seen on the kart in the picture, adding a few touches of his own. He took aim and methodically fired at four peppermint wheels, and then began laying down a thick layer of white icing as the bare bones of his future vehicle were pushed along beneath.

"Pajama Boy, your car is gonna look really boring!" declared Vanellope. "Don't you want any colors on it?"

"Trust me, I know what I'm doing!" he responded, adding a few pinches of red frosting to the mix. He only hoped that the final result would look the way that he was intending…

"TIME'S UP!"

The assembly line ended in a ramp, and the two of them darted over to it eagerly, now anticipating with equal enthusiasm what their one minute of frenzied work had produced. "CONGRATULATIONS, YOU DID IT, AND HERE'S YOUR KART!" praised the announcer, and down the ramp rolled…

…a go-kart in the very shape that Turbo had selected, primarily white but marbled with crimson stripes along the sides, lean and edgy and ready to tear up the road.

"Yay, it looks super cool!" giggled Vanellope, clapping her hands together. "What do you think, Pajama Boy?"

"It is pretty Turbo-Tastic, isn't it?" agreed Turbo, with a grin wide enough to reveal his yellow teeth. "But I think it's still…" He squinted as he gazed down the kart's mostly bare surface. "…missing something…"

He snapped his fingers as a sudden epiphany struck him. Over to one side of the factory was a shelf lined with piping bags, and he ran over to snatch one filled with red icing, before approaching his new car with a look of determination. It was time to make his mark on this thing.

Several minutes of squirting, spreading, and smearing later, he had accomplished his goal: a large red T was now glazed across the hood of the kart. He took a step back and smiled, dusting off his hands. "There. Now, it's perfect," he said, satisfied with his handiwork. But when this failed to elicit a response, he glanced over his shoulder with a slight frown. "Um, Vanellope?"

The garage-style sliding door at the end of the factory suddenly went up, and before there was more than a sliver of a gap between the bottom of the door and the ground, Vanellope had come charging inside in her own kart. She had placed her hot-pink goggles over her face again, but they did nothing to conceal her challenging smirk. "Well, Pajama Boy, are you just gonna stand there like a moron, or are you actually gonna drive that thing?"

Turbo blinked…then a delighted smile spread across his pale face, and his hand plunged into his jumpsuit pocket, grateful that he always kept his goggles on him nowadays.

"Race you back to the castle!" she proclaimed.

He secured the black goggles over his helmet and stuck his thumb up at her, copying his primary victory gesture from Turbo Time. "You are so on!"

* * *

Ten minutes later, he was barreling down the road at full speed while simultaneously grinning like an idiot. He liked this new car…no, he loved this new car. It was markedly faster than the generic vehicle that he had been using until now, and the buzz of its fresh-from-the-bakery engine ignited the most basic, shining kind of happiness within his very core. But perhaps more than that, it truly felt like something that was his and his alone, and it was something that any racer should possess: a racecar. He let out a spontaneous whoop of joy as he and Vanellope sped down the checkered pathway to her castle.

Vanellope, who was just ahead of him, peeked at her rearview mirror and laughed when she spotted the expression of ecstatic bliss on his face. "Having fun?"

"You bet I am!" he shouted, swerving in an attempt to get ahead of her, but she matched his movements and remained in front. He furrowed his brow in concentration. The day had been full of new things thus far, so maybe it was time to take yet another risk…he sucked in a deep breath, focused hard, and glitched.

She yelped with surprise when his car suddenly appeared on the road in front of her, materializing in a glittering fizzle of red pixels. Turbo, blinking as the glitch ended, returned to reality quickly enough that he didn't lose control of his vehicle. "I…I did it," he said aloud, and the wonder in his voice faded as he fully realized it. "Yes! YES! I did it! I did it! I used my glitch to get ahead! I FINALLY DID IT!"

Vanellope cheered at that, but was unable to keep from laughing at his reaction. "All right, Pajama Boy! Way to go!"

Turbo braked just in front of the royal garage, leapt out of his kart, and practically started dancing, he was so giddy at the perfection of the situation. Finally, things were starting to go right for him! He had his own car again, his glitch was helping him rather than hurting him, and now he even had something that he'd never had before – a friend, a good friend, a best friend. It was safe to say that he never would have gotten this far if it hadn't been for Vanellope, and he felt no shame in admitting that now. After all, there was nothing wrong with getting help from someone who truly cared about him…and who he cared about just as much, if not more.

Vanellope smirked as she pulled up alongside him, flicking her bangs away from her eyes. "I guess you won that one."

"Turbo-Tastic!" he exclaimed, pumping a fist into the air, and she snickered.

"Hey, I almost forgot." She reached under her seat, rummaging around for something. "I have another present for you." She produced a round, flat, shiny object, about the size of a dinner plate, and tossed it to him Frisbee-style. Turbo plucked it out of the air with some confusion, turning it around in his hands. It was…

"A gold coin?" he asked.

"Yup. You're gonna need it when you enter the Random Roster Race tomorrow!"

Turbo gasped. "The…the Random Roster Race?! Y-you really think I'm ready for that?!"

"Hey, you just used your glitch to win a race against me, and I'm the best there is!" She puffed out her chest proudly. "I think it's safe to say that you're ready for the track. You're in control now, Pajama Boy. Congrats!"

"Oh, Turbo-Tastic!" he repeated, hugging the gold coin as if it was a precious childhood teddy bear. "Thank you, thank you, a million times thank you, Vanellope!"

"Aw, it was nothin'. You put in the hard work yourself, after all…"

"No, really, I can't thank you enough! What you've done, it…it means a lot to me." He drew in a deep breath, his smile shrinking slightly, but becoming no less sincere. "Back in Turbo Time, I called Jet and Set my friends, but I never showed any gratitude towards them. I was just mean to them, and I acted that way until the end. I'm not going to be like that anymore. I want you to know how much I appreciate your help. So…thank you."

Vanellope stiffened, taken off-guard by his sentimentality. Her eyes dropped bashfully. "Uh…you're welcome." She reached out to him, brushing her fingers against his. "Just make me proud tomorrow, Turbo."

"Don't worry!" His sense of glee returned to him, and he grinned at her, oblivious to the sudden somberness that had clouded over her hazel eyes. For him, this was nothing but an occasion for the two of them to celebrate his return to racing…one of the best days of his life. "I won't let you down!"

* * *

He was far too happy for the nightmares to overtake him that night, and during the entirety of the next day, he paced throughout the castle, too excited to sit still long enough to work on his scarf. Anxiety nibbled at the edges of his consciousness, blending with excitement to form an uneasy, frothy mixture. What if the other racers freaked out when they saw his ghost boy appearance? What if he lost control and started glitching during the race? Or worse, what if he couldn't even enter the race because the game wouldn't recognize his code when he went to toss in his coin? Various catastrophe situations pranced through his head, but the potential rewards kept him eagerly awaiting the moment when the arcade would close.

He bounced around in his room, counting down the minutes, until finally the clock displayed a good time to get ready. In addition to his goggles, he snatched a pair of red elbow-length gloves out of his vanity drawer; he'd found them weeks ago but had been coveting them for a special occasion, and nothing could be more special than today. He was in such a hurry that he ended up knocking over the frame on the vanity that he'd been using to display the picture of himself with Jet and Set – other than his car, it was his most prized possession, but he was too busy leaping out the door to notice that it had fallen.

The drive to the Royal Raceway seemed agonizingly slow, and Turbo contemplated using his glitch to speed things up several times, but in the end he thought better of it. He was still only able to teleport so many times before he fainted, after all, and he had no plans to pass out on the track.

Vanellope intercepted him just before he reached the track, while the other racers were still milling about and preparing to line up. He could tell that exactly the same emotions that had been eating at him all day were fermenting inside of her, and as she came up to him, she kept bouncing from one foot to the other. "Are you excited, Pajama Boy? You should be," she proclaimed. "Oh, this is gonna be so much fun! We'll be racing together all the time! The gamers are gonna love you!"

"I hope so," replied Turbo. "Uh…what'll they even think when I show up on the roster, anyway? The gamers, I mean."

"They'll think that you're a super cool bonus character that the programmers put in as an Easter egg. You know, like the Q-Bert guys in Fix It Felix Jr.?"

"Oh, right. Yeah, that makes sense." He glitched, then winced.

"Aw, Pajama Boy, don't start glitching on me now!" Vanellope wagged a finger in his face. "Come on, where's your confidence?! This is what we've been training for, buddy boy! This is why I've been giving you glitch lessons for the past month! You're finally gonna be a real racer again, so get excited!"

He firmed his shoulders, tilted up his chin, and nodded in confirmation. "I can do it!" he declared. "I'm Turbo, the greatest racer ever!"

"That's the spirit! Now come on, bring your sugary T car to the starting line! You can put it right next to mine! Then you can line up with the other racers…" She pressed her lips together. "Um, if they stare at you when they first see you, don't be upset. They'll change their tune real quick when they see what a good racer you are."

"It's okay. I'm used to having people stare at me." He couldn't help but sigh.

He should have known that something was going to go wrong, starting from when he gathered beneath the popcorn box with the other fourteen avatars while they waited for Vanellope to give the daily announcements. Everyone was staring at him, and even though he had grown accustomed to this sort of treatment over time, something about these crawling eyes made him feel particularly uncomfortable. He spotted one of the girls, Taffyta, whispering into the ear of Rancis Fluggerbutter, and they both looked away when he turned his head in their direction.

Something is wrong here, he thought. Something is really, really wrong here. Maybe if I could just remember…

Remember, remember, remember, hoo-hoo-hoo!

He glitched. That last part hadn't felt like his own mental voice.

Vanellope mentioned him in her speech, although not directly. All she said was, "Um, as I'm sure you all can see, we have a new racer joining us today. He's my friend from another game, and he'll be competing with us. Please make him feel welcome." And then she smiled with an uncharacteristic amount of trepidation, looking down so that her gaze landed on Turbo, and somehow he managed to smile back.

And at last, the time of judgment had arrived: all of the avatars pulled out their gold coins and lined up in front of the winner's cup, while he nervously shuffled up at the back, clutching his token as if it were a life preserver. Vanellope speed-glitched her way down from the popcorn box and stood beside him, one pudgy little hand lightly gripping his sleeve. Her presence was admittedly reassuring.

"JUBILEENA BING-BING! SNOWANNA RAINBEAU! GLOYD ORANGEBOAR!" One by one, every Sugar Rush racer was listed on the board, each name accompanied by a small icon and a round of applause from their respective supporters. The line inched upwards as the children hurried off to their cars, until only Turbo and Vanellope were left standing on the sidelines. Turbo suddenly realized that he was petrified, and that slight glitches were crawling across his skin. "Y-you go first, glitter-graphics," he whispered.

Vanellope shrugged and skipped forward, tossing her coin nonchalantly. It bounced upwards, landed in the winner's cup, and the announcer's voice boomed, "VANELLOPE VON SCHWEETZ!"

The crowd cheered loudest of all for their president, and Turbo stepped forward, steadying himself with a deep breath. All of this attention and praise could just as easily be his…it was no longer out of reach. He only had to throw his coin, and he could prove himself. As his eyes roamed across the "assorted fans" section, he noticed that Felix and Calhoun had arrived (sitting next to Ralph, of course) and were both smiling and nodding at him, silently urging him on. He felt a surge of renewed confidence. Suddenly, he knew that he could do this.

Turbo strode forward and threw his coin. It arced high above the track, glinting like a slice of sunlight, spinning down gracefully into the golden trophy perched atop the starting line. As it fell, he was once again gripped by the fear that his code wouldn't be recognized and that nothing would go up on the board at all…

But that wasn't what happened.

All it took to turn the day from one of his best ever into one of his worst ever was the simple flip of a coin. That was it; that was all he'd done to deserve what came next. And when the name went up beside the number 16 on the enormous screen, the announcer's voice of course shouted it out loudly and proudly, oblivious to how the spectators and Turbo himself were reacting to this turn of events.

One coin, two words. And the name that the jumbotron blared out was:

"KING CANDY!"


	11. Unwanted revelations

_Unwanted revelations_

* * *

Every single person at the Royal Raceway – from the sentient candies lining the bleachers, to the racers, to Vanellope and Turbo – seemed to draw in a collective, mortified breath in perfect unison. Thick silence clotted the air, all sound somehow muffled after the jumbotron's announcement. And through it all, the stylized icon of King Candy never gave so much as a flicker on the board, smiling down at the assembled crowd with a too-good-to-be-true jolly smile.

Turbo couldn't do anything except stare and glitch, frantically grappling for something that resembled comprehension. What had he done that the other avatars hadn't? He'd just tossed his coin into the winner's cup like everybody else, and then…King Candy had shown up.

King Candy. The evil former monarch of Sugar Rush, a fragment of scrapped coding run amok, the person responsible for dethroning Vanellope and reducing her to nothing but an outcast and a glitch. A regular recurring player in Turbo's nightmares, returning to warp and melt and leer night after night. A character who had been dead for quite some time. Why was his name up on the board? And why in the world had it happened after Turbo had thrown in his token? It just didn't add up.

 _Remember remember remember…_

"I knew it!" shrieked a high-pitched voice. Turbo spun around to find that the hot-pink strawberry girl, Taffyta, had one hand clapped against her chubby cheek, while the other jabbed an accusing finger in his direction. "I knew it! I knew he looked familiar!" she screeched. "That's Turbo, the creepy sicko who took over our game and erased everybody's memories!"

Her words crashed into him as if she had dealt him a physical blow, and his limbs exploded into glitches. "Wh…what?" he choked out.

Candlehead began to cry, and Crumbelina di Caramello placed a comforting hand on the other girl's shoulder, glancing fearfully at Turbo and cringing when he gaped back. Rancis Fluggerbutter shouted, "That psycho! I thought he died! H-he's back to kill us all!" Adorabeezle Winterpop, Jubileena Bing-Bing, and Minty Zaki all screamed and attempted to hide behind their karts. And the Sugar Rush denizens in the stands had become jumpier than a bag of popcorn in a microwave; many were even attempting to break for the exits. To Turbo, the whole thing looked like a flurry of fingers pointing at him, a dull roar of people telling him how awful he was, and he couldn't understand why.

Vanellope snatched the cuff of his sleeve and yanked him aside, and being as stunned and near-frozen as he was, he hardly noticed that he was being dragged along behind her until they had ducked into a corner, away from everyone's prying stares. She gazed up at him with pleading hazel eyes that made her look, if anything, more freaked out than he was. "Turbo…"

"W-what's going on?" he stammered, his voice distorting as a violent glitch tore up his body. "Why d-does it say K-King Candy?!"

"It's – it's probably just some weird mistake in the code!" she answered desperately, trying to pull her mouth into a strained parody of a smile. "King Candy was on the roster before. It's just a coincidence that his name popped up when you – "

"No." His lips wrapped around the lone syllable, interrupting her failed reassurances, and she stopped up short.

"No? W-whaddaya mean, no?" she asked. A very slight quiver had crept into both her eyes and her voice.

"You're lying to me…aren't you?"

It was like he'd only truly accepted the truth after speaking the words, and it must have shown on his face, because Vanellope took notice. He watched as a swallow moved down her suddenly pale throat.

At about this time, Felix, Calhoun, and Ralph hurriedly approached them, having managed to make their way through the panicked racers and civilians. Felix immediately rushed up, exclaiming, "Turbo! Oh, my land, I'm so sorry you had to go through that! Never fear, it's just a little malfunction, we'll get it all sorted out…"

" _No_." This time Turbo's voice was much more solid, tainted with anger around the edges. His pupils roamed across the four people gathered around him, the people who had saved him after Turbo Time had been unplugged, the people who had been withholding information from him since the very beginning. "Don't lie! That had something to do with me, didn't it?! His name only went up on the board after I threw in my coin! What's going on here?! Why does it say King Candy?!"

He was glitching pretty severely now, all of his careful training discarded in the emotional heat of the moment, but his words weren't so garbled that they were unintelligible. Everyone knew what he was saying, and his desire to finally get answers couldn't possibly have been misunderstood.

Calhoun stepped forward, her face pulling into the same grim expression that he imagined it must have held before a major battle. "Listen, kid, we're just as surprised as you are – "

"Will you just tell me the truth already?!" He hadn't meant to sound so hysterical, but he couldn't help it anymore; he had accepted their lies for so long that his need for the truth was now unbearable. "I'm not stupid! I know that you've been hiding something from me since I first got here! What is going on?! Why have you all been treating me so strangely?! What is it that you're not telling me?!"

Glitch glitch glitch. He was panting as he finished his rant, unable to squeeze any of the almost painful tension from his muscles.

Calhoun looked somberly at Felix, who looked at Ralph, who looked at Vanellope. At last, the little girl came towards Turbo, her enormous eyes downcast. "Let's take a walk," she told him, her voice flat and strained.

Turbo glitched again as an inexplicable pang of terror jolted through his chest. "But…what about the race?" he asked.

"Hey, there's…there's races every day." Her lips didn't even twitch; she was far beyond smiling at this point. "We need to talk, Turbo."

He sucked in a deep breath, reached out, and curled his fingers around hers. He had never held hands with someone before, but right now, he desperately needed something to clutch to and to keep him grounded in reality. "Okay."

"Vanellope…" started Ralph. "Are you sure you wanna do this?"

"It has to be me," she replied, defeated, but never faltering. "After all, this was all my idea in the first place." She began to walk away slowly, devoid of her usual energy, still hand in hand with Turbo. "I'll meet up with you guys back at the castle."

Vanellope and Turbo traveled in silence for several minutes as they left the Royal Raceway. She was despondent, refusing to make eye contact with him, and he was practically trembling with the anticipation of what he was about to hear. Whatever it was that had been kept from him, it clearly was not a good thing. But the occurrences at the racetrack today had made him positive that it was something that he needed to know.

Finally, she spoke up. "You told me you dreamed about King Candy. What else have you been dreaming about?"

Turbo paused, frowning. "Uh…I've had nightmares about Turbo Time being unplugged. And ones about being pulled into a bright light that burns me. And the other night, I dreamed that we were both racing, but then I started attacking you for some reason…"

Vanellope didn't say anything. She didn't have to – for once, he could see perfectly on her face what she was thinking. And what she was thinking was that she'd known what he was going to say.

He glitched.

"…They're just nightmares," he said, as if he'd never suspected that they might be anything more. "They don't mean anything."

"Oh yes they do. They're not just nightmares…they're memories."

She stopped up short, angling her head to look at him for the first time since they'd left the Royal Raceway. Tear tracks descended down her cheeks, and the sight made his legs go weak – she was _crying,_ actually _crying!_ "I-I don't know how to tell you this, so I'm just gonna say it. Turbo Time and Road Blasters weren't unplugged because they got old or weren't popular anymore. They were unplugged…because of you."

He stared. She had spoken clearly enough and he'd heard her, but what she was saying…made no sense at all. Was she implying that _he_ had done something to Road Blasters and his own cabinet that had gotten them both unplugged? He couldn't have done that…surely he wouldn't have…

"You got jealous of Road Blasters. Really, really jealous. So jealous that you left your own game to try to put yourself in the new one. But you made the software get corrupted, so it was unplugged, and then when the gamers saw that you were missing from your game…"

His last night in Turbo Time flashed into his head: brooding in bed, scheming up ways to prove to the arcade that he was better than anything in RoadBlasters. _But that doesn't mean that I…!_ He shuddered, scarlet binary flickering up his spine.

"After this game was plugged in, you came in and took over it," Vanellope continued miserably. "You reprogrammed everything so that I was just a glitch and you were the star. And you locked up all of our memories so we never knew that anything was wrong…"

 _No_.

"Except you had to make yourself look like you belonged in this game in order for us to believe it..."

 _I wouldn't_.

"So you found an abandoned character model in the code vault, and…"

 _I didn't!_

"What are you saying?" whispered Turbo in a hoarse, shaky voice.

Vanellope winced, her gaze glued to the ground. It was a stupid question for him to have asked, anyway, because they both knew very well –

"Just say it." This time he was louder, not quite upset, not quite angry – more hysterical than anything. "Do it! _Just say it already_!"

"Okay, okay!" Her hands hovered in front of her face, anticipating a strike, or maybe she just wanted to shield herself from the blow of the truth she'd always. "Y…you were King Candy."

Turbo stumbled backwards dizzily, lost his footing, and staggered against the branches of a candy cane sapling for support. He didn't faint; how could he have fainted when his mind was boiling with enough horror to keep him awake for years? He swore that he could see the dark tide of information bubbling behind his eyes, taunting him.

 _You were King Candy._

 _You got two games unplugged. You murdered everyone in RoadBlasters. Jet and Set are dead because of you._

 _And that little girl over there, the one who you've been hanging out with and calling your best friend? You almost destroyed her code, you left her alone and ostracized for fifteen years, you ruined her life just to be the center of attention, because…_

"You're wrong," he croaked, scrambling still further back from her, his incessant glitching almost causing him to topple to the ground. "It's not true…!"

"Why would I lie to you about this, Turbo?!" cried Vanellope. "I wish it wasn't true! I didn't want it to be true! That's why I never told you…!"

"It never happened! Never! You're _lying_!" he shouted, shaking his head back and forth rapidly. "I would know if that had happened! I would _remember_ something like that!"

"Not if your memories were erased! And they were, okay?! I know, because – " She gritted her teeth like it was causing her physical pain to take this any further. "Because I did it! I was the one who decided to reset you!"

He felt faint, but he wasn't sure if it was because of the fact that his body was violently dissolving into static, or because of what she was telling him. His knees had suddenly gone weak, and acid churned up in his stomach. "W-wha…why would you…why would you…!"

"I was trying to _help_ you!" she shouted. "We figured out who you were and I got my game back – but we thought you died after – you did, but you _regenerated_! And you came back and you were going to kill me, and all the grown-ups were ready to kill _you_ , but I didn't want to, okay?! I wanted to help! Because Felix told me about before RoadBlasters when you didn't used to be evil, and I thought, maybe there was still some good left in you! But you were so screwed up that you wouldn't take any help from me and then the grown-ups went in the code vault and ripped you up and then I realized that if we just reset you…!"

 _No._

Turbo prodded his foot backwards, and it was a miracle that his shuddering legs didn't dump him to the ground. He squeezed his eyes shut as if that would block out the world, restore things to how they had been just a few short hours before, make it all go away…he couldn't possibly cope with this…

 _No, no, no…_

Involuntarily, he clamped his hands over his ears. His teeth chattered, clattering together like a pair of castanets. He had wanted to know. He had thought that he wanted to know the truth, and now he couldn't take it back. Yes, the others had all lied to him, but all of a sudden he was starting to understand that they had cultivated those falsehoods for a reason. He wanted it back, he wanted to return to that comfortable sham of a life that he had been living for the past month…

 _Nonononononononono…_

"You're _lying_!" he screamed, clamping his hands over his ears, desperately hoping to shut out the revelations. " _That's not true! That can't be true! I AM NOT KING CANDY!"_

" _Will you just stop for ONE SECOND and LISTEN TO ME?!"_ she screamed back, fists balled up and shaking at her sides, eyes scrunched nearly shut. " _I was HELPING you!_ "

" _You lied to me!_ " he howled, his hands still firmly shoved against the sides of his helmet. Every breath he gulped down felt coarse and prickling in his lungs…was he beginning to hyperventilate…?

Chest heaving, body wracked with spasming code distortions, Turbo finally lost his balance and sank to his knees. If Vanellope was shouting anything else at him, he couldn't hear it. He pressed both hands against his face.

It all made sense now. The cutoff in his memories; Vanellope's flashes of uncertainty; Ralph's aggressiveness and overprotectiveness; the fact that he had been forbidden from leaving the castle without supervision and had always been hidden away from the denizens of Sugar Rush. This was why King Candy's name had gone up on the board. This was why the other racers had freaked out when they'd recognized him. Turbo was the evil, deceitful, despicable King Candy. Just because he no longer remembered it didn't mean that it wasn't true.

The horrific crimes that he had committed were truly endless. Because of him, two game cabinets had been unplugged; Jet and Set had died along with Turbo Time; Vanellope had been turned into a glitch, and he'd tried to _kill_ her, he'd tried to isolate and emotionally torment and _murder_ his only true friend in the world! No wonder she often looked like she was expecting him to do something awful – she knew what he was capable of, and she had _always_ known! And yet at the same time…

They had lied to him. They had _lied_ to _him_! All of them, Felix, Ralph, Sergeant Calhoun, even Vanellope. They'd never told him about his past, and if it hadn't been for the Random Roster Race today, they probably never would have. Did they even care about his well-being at all, or all this time, they had only been stowing him away for their own safety, keeping him locked up without giving a thought to how _he_ felt?! And Vanellope especially…she had said that she was his friend…she'd said…

He glitched. He couldn't fully grasp any of the thoughts pounding in his head. He didn't know what to think about the others, or what to believe about himself, and now he was past the point of being able to care.

Vanellope stared at him, her eyes aflame with desperation, breathing so hard that it was making her whole body rise and fall like the tides. She didn't reach out to him.

"You were just spending time with me because of this?!" he cried, his voice cracking and warping and hysterical. "You were just pretending to be my friend so that I wouldn't remember?!"

Her eyes flared even wider. " _What?!_ Of course not! How could you say something like that?! I was the only one who really thought you could be good again, even after everything you did to me! I cared about you from the start! I _saved_ you!"

" _No you did not!"_ He could no longer hold back the screams, no matter how heartbreaking she may have looked as her face crumpled. The words were spewing from his mouth uncontrollably. " _You were just trying to protect yourself! You kept me here because you didn't want other people to see me! It had nothing to do with how I felt! Well, I don't need to be a racer here! I don't need this game! And I don't need YOU!"_

Darkness lingered at the corners of his vision; his body was dissolving into strands of static and binary code; and yet somehow, Turbo still managed to scrabble to his feet and bolt away from her. He could imagine that she was probably shouting for him and reaching out to stop him, that she was yelling for him to come back…but after a moment, he was no longer aware of any of that, because something else happened.

He heard the voice. It was the voice that had spoken to him in his nightmares and during the day, in his bedroom and in Diet Cola Mountain – the voice always urging him to remember. He had never heard it with his ears; this voice was only audible in his mind, because that was where it had been the entire time.

" _That's right, we don't need them!"_ chuckled the voice that he now knew as King Candy's. It was a jolly, harmless voice on the surface, but underneath it was a cruelty worse than any he'd ever known, like candy wrapper surrounding a razor blade. It had never been so loud before, or so _close_ , to the point where it even overpowered the sound of his heartbeat.

 _But Vanellope said that she wiped my memories…!_

Yes, but a character's memories weren't as clear cut as save files on a game screen. Turbo knew enough about code to understand that when you were getting rid of something, actually deleting it often led to a lot of inconvenient errors down the line, so normally the offending items were just…detached. Separated. Left free-floating in the code without linking to anything.

 _But if you detach a memory, where does it go?_

" _We're fine on our own, and we always have been,"_ the voice continued. " _And do you know why?_ " Now Turbo was losing control of his own body. Blackness rose up, poised to crash over him, and yet he still felt himself running, running, running…he was in someone else's grasp now, there could be no doubt of that.

" _Because together, we're the most powerful being in the arcade, and we can take back what's rightfully ours. The old king is dead…long live the new king!"_

Turbo no longer knew if he was listening to King Candy, or to himself, or even if there was any difference left between the two.

And as the part of him that was still himself lost consciousness, he didn't have time to do anything more than give a weak, terrified little glitch…


End file.
